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Alertness opens the effective flow of sensory information through rat thalamic posterior nucleus
Author(s) -
Sobolewski Aleksander,
Kublik Ewa,
Swiejkowski Daniel A.,
Kamiński Jan,
Wróbel Andrzej
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.12901
Subject(s) - thalamus , neuroscience , sensory system , somatosensory system , sensory cortex , arousal , cortex (anatomy) , alertness , nucleus , psychology , sensory processing , barrel cortex , psychiatry
Abstract Behavioural reactions to sensory stimuli vary with the level of arousal, but little is known about the underlying reorganization of neuronal networks. In this study, we use chronic recordings from the somatosensory regions of the thalamus and cortex of behaving rats together with a novel analysis of functional connectivity to show that during low arousal tactile signals are transmitted via the ventral posteromedial thalamic nucleus ( VPM ), a first‐order thalamic relay, to the primary somatosensory (barrel) cortex and then from the cortex to the posterior medial thalamic nucleus (PoM), which plays a role of a higher‐order thalamic relay. By contrast, during high arousal this network scheme is modified and both VPM and PoM transmit peripheral input to the barrel cortex acting as first‐order relays. We also show that in urethane anaesthesia PoM is largely excluded from the thalamo‐cortical loop. We thus demonstrate a way in which the thalamo‐cortical system, despite its fixed anatomy, is capable of dynamically reconfiguring the transmission route of a sensory signal in concert with the behavioural state of an animal.