Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex

In mammals, a complex array of oral sensors assess the taste, temperature and haptic properties of food. Although the representation of taste has been extensively studied in the gustatory cortex, it is unclear how the somatosensory cortex encodes information about the properties of oral stimuli. Mor...

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Autores principales: Clemens, Ann M., Fernandez Delgado, Yohami, Mehlman, Max L., Mishra, Poonam, Brecht, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30201995
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31710-0
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author Clemens, Ann M.
Fernandez Delgado, Yohami
Mehlman, Max L.
Mishra, Poonam
Brecht, Michael
author_facet Clemens, Ann M.
Fernandez Delgado, Yohami
Mehlman, Max L.
Mishra, Poonam
Brecht, Michael
author_sort Clemens, Ann M.
collection PubMed
description In mammals, a complex array of oral sensors assess the taste, temperature and haptic properties of food. Although the representation of taste has been extensively studied in the gustatory cortex, it is unclear how the somatosensory cortex encodes information about the properties of oral stimuli. Moreover, it is poorly understood how different oral sensory modalities are integrated and how sensory responses are translated into oral motor actions. To investigate whether oral somatosensory cortex processes food-related sensations and movements, we performed in vivo whole-cell recordings and motor mapping experiments in rats. Neurons in oral somatosensory cortex showed robust post-synaptic and sparse action potential responses to air puffs. Membrane potential showed that cold water evoked larger responses than room temperature or hot water. Most neurons showed no clear tuning of responses to bitter, sweet and neutral gustatory stimuli. Finally, motor mapping experiments with histological verification revealed an initiation of movements related to food consumption behavior, such as jaw opening and tongue protrusions. We conclude that somatosensory cortex: (i) provides a representation of the temperature of oral stimuli, (ii) does not systematically encode taste information and (iii) influences orofacial movements related to food consummatory behavior.
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spelling pubmed-61311442018-09-13 Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex Clemens, Ann M. Fernandez Delgado, Yohami Mehlman, Max L. Mishra, Poonam Brecht, Michael Sci Rep Article In mammals, a complex array of oral sensors assess the taste, temperature and haptic properties of food. Although the representation of taste has been extensively studied in the gustatory cortex, it is unclear how the somatosensory cortex encodes information about the properties of oral stimuli. Moreover, it is poorly understood how different oral sensory modalities are integrated and how sensory responses are translated into oral motor actions. To investigate whether oral somatosensory cortex processes food-related sensations and movements, we performed in vivo whole-cell recordings and motor mapping experiments in rats. Neurons in oral somatosensory cortex showed robust post-synaptic and sparse action potential responses to air puffs. Membrane potential showed that cold water evoked larger responses than room temperature or hot water. Most neurons showed no clear tuning of responses to bitter, sweet and neutral gustatory stimuli. Finally, motor mapping experiments with histological verification revealed an initiation of movements related to food consumption behavior, such as jaw opening and tongue protrusions. We conclude that somatosensory cortex: (i) provides a representation of the temperature of oral stimuli, (ii) does not systematically encode taste information and (iii) influences orofacial movements related to food consummatory behavior. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6131144/ /pubmed/30201995 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31710-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Clemens, Ann M.
Fernandez Delgado, Yohami
Mehlman, Max L.
Mishra, Poonam
Brecht, Michael
Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title_full Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title_fullStr Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title_full_unstemmed Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title_short Multisensory and Motor Representations in Rat Oral Somatosensory Cortex
title_sort multisensory and motor representations in rat oral somatosensory cortex
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30201995
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31710-0
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