The overall aim of this study is to elucidate the neural circuit mechanisms underlying the immediate and marked reorganization of sensory maps in the somatosensory system caused by local anesthesia (e.g. dental anesthesia). We refer to this phenomenon as """"""""acute plasticity"""""""". The working hypothesis is that sensory representations in the somatosensory system are not """"""""hard-wired"""""""", but instead represent a """"""""dynamic equilibrium"""""""" between both feedforward and feedback influences on sensory processing neurons. This predicts that inactivation of any particular part of this system should cause rapid compensatory changes throughout much of the rest of the system. This hypothesis will be tested neurophysiologically through utilization of our recently developed techniques for simultaneous recordings of large numbers of (up to 128) single neurons distributed through multiple levels of the rat trigeminal system. experiments will characterize the acute effects of altering this dynamic equilibrium of representations in this system by functionally inactivating either the periphery (through lidocaine anesthesia in the gums and face), or specific parts of the somatosensory (51) cortex (through small focal electrolytic lesions or local infusions of the GABA-A agonist muscimol). Large numbers of single neurons will be simultaneously recorded through arrays of microwire electrodes chronically implanted at all processing levels of the trigeminal pathway from the trigeminal ganglion to the somatosensory cortex in pentobarbital or Fentanyl anesthetized rats. In both the peripheral anesthesia and SI cortical lesion studies, initial control measurements will quantitatively define the receptive fields (RFs) of each neuron and also """"""""population maps"""""""" depicting the response of the neuronal population at each level to particular stimuli. The same measurements will then be repeated immediately, and again after recovery (from the reversible inactivations). These measurements will allow precise quantitative determination of the time course of induced changes in sensory representations.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DE011451-02
Application #
2132777
Study Section
Neurology B Subcommittee 2 (NEUB)
Project Start
1994-09-01
Project End
1998-08-31
Budget Start
1995-09-26
Budget End
1996-08-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
1995
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Duke University
Department
Biology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
071723621
City
Durham
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27705
Thomson, Eric E; Zea, Ivan; Windham, William et al. (2017) Cortical Neuroprosthesis Merges Visible and Invisible Light Without Impairing Native Sensory Function. eNeuro 4:
Hartmann, Konstantin; Thomson, Eric E; Zea, Ivan et al. (2016) Embedding a Panoramic Representation of Infrared Light in the Adult Rat Somatosensory Cortex through a Sensory Neuroprosthesis. J Neurosci 36:2406-24
Pais-Vieira, Miguel; Yadav, Amol P; Moreira, Derek et al. (2016) A Closed Loop Brain-machine Interface for Epilepsy Control Using Dorsal Column Electrical Stimulation. Sci Rep 6:32814
Pais-Vieira, Miguel; Kunicki, Carolina; Tseng, Po-He et al. (2015) Cortical and thalamic contributions to response dynamics across layers of the primary somatosensory cortex during tactile discrimination. J Neurophysiol 114:1652-76
Pais-Vieira, Miguel; Chiuffa, Gabriela; Lebedev, Mikhail et al. (2015) Building an organic computing device with multiple interconnected brains. Sci Rep 5:11869
Thomson, Eric; Lou, Jason; Sylvester, Kathryn et al. (2014) Basal forebrain dynamics during a tactile discrimination task. J Neurophysiol 112:1179-91
Pais-Vieira, Miguel; Lebedev, Mikhail A; Wiest, Michael C et al. (2013) Simultaneous top-down modulation of the primary somatosensory cortex and thalamic nuclei during active tactile discrimination. J Neurosci 33:4076-93
Thomson, Eric E; Carra, Rafael; Nicolelis, Miguel A L (2013) Perceiving invisible light through a somatosensory cortical prosthesis. Nat Commun 4:1482
Pais-Vieira, Miguel; Lebedev, Mikhail; Kunicki, Carolina et al. (2013) A brain-to-brain interface for real-time sharing of sensorimotor information. Sci Rep 3:1319
Vasconcelos, Nivaldo; Pantoja, Janaina; Belchior, Hindiael et al. (2011) Cross-modal responses in the primary visual cortex encode complex objects and correlate with tactile discrimination. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108:15408-13

Showing the most recent 10 out of 25 publications