Environmental enrichment differentially modifies specific components of sensory-evoked activity in rat barrel cortex as revealed by simultaneous electrophysiological recordings and optical imaging in vivo

Neuroscience
Ian M DevonshireSusan A Greenfield

Abstract

Environmental enrichment of laboratory animals leads to multi-faceted changes to physiology, health and disease prognosis. An important and under-appreciated factor in enhancing cognition through environmental manipulation may be improved basic sensory function. Previous studies have highlighted changes in cortical sensory map plasticity but have used techniques such as electrophysiology, which suffer from poor spatial resolution, or optical imaging of intrinsic signals, which suffers from low temporal resolution. The current study attempts to overcome these limitations by combining voltage-sensitive dye imaging with somatosensory-evoked potential (SEP) recordings: the specific aim was to investigate sensory function in barrel cortex using multi-frequency whisker stimulation under urethane anaesthesia. Three groups of rats were used that each experienced a different level of behavioural or environmental enrichment. We found that enrichment increased all SEP response components subsequent to the initial thalamocortical input, but only when evoked by single stimuli; the thalamocortical component remained unchanged across all animal groups. The optical signal exhibited no changes in amplitude or latency between groups, resembling ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 18, 2014·Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience·Dasuni S Alwis, Ramesh Rajan
Dec 15, 2016·Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience·Julia Fernández-MontoyaCarlos Avendaño
Jan 26, 2017·Frontiers in Neural Circuits·Antoine-Scott BadinSusan A Greenfield
Jan 3, 2014·Physiological Reviews·Alessandro SaleLamberto Maffei

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Barrel cortex

Here is the latest research on barrel cortex, a region of somatosensory and motor corticies in the brain, which are used by animals that rely on whiskers for world exploration.