Multimodal Sensory Responses of Nucleus Reticularis Gigantocellularis and the Responses' Relation to Cortical and Motor Activation

Martin, Eugene M.; Pavlides, Constantine; Pfaff, Donald W.

doi:10.1152/jn.01122.2009

Cited by 49 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Briefly, the wide range of axonal projections mentioned above provides the neuroanatomical substrate. NGC neurons can respond to stimuli in all sensory modalities (Martin et al, 2010). Importantly, elevated firing rates precede movement indicating that NGC provides the basis for sensory responsivity.…”

Section: Molecular Regulation Of Gamentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized CNS arousal: An elementary force within the vertebrate nervous system

Calderon

Kılınç

Maritan

et al. 2016

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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Why do animals and humans do anything at all? Arousal is the most powerful and essential function of the brain, a continuous function that accounts for the ability of animals and humans to respond to stimuli in the environment by producing muscular responses. Following decades of psychological, neurophysiological and molecular investigations, generalized CNS arousal can now be analyzed using approaches usually applied to physical systems. The concept of “criticality” is a state that illustrates an advantage for arousal systems poised near a phase transition. This property provides speed and sensitivity and facilitates the transition of the system into different brain states, especially as the brain crosses a phase transition from less aroused to more aroused states. In summary, concepts derived from applied mathematics of physical systems will now find their application in this area of neuroscience, the neurobiology of CNS arousal.

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Section: Molecular Regulation Of Gamentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalized CNS arousal: An elementary force within the vertebrate nervous system

Calderon

Kılınç

Maritan

et al. 2016

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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“…Brainstem slices containing NGC from young mouse pups were prepared as described previously [15,21,22]. Briefly, mice were deeply anesthetized with isoflurane (used with an Anesthesia Machine from LEI medical Co.) and decapitated to quickly remove the brain The brain was then rinsed and chilled with ice-cold (4°) aerated (95% 02/5% CO2) sucrose artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) for about one minute.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Electrical recordings of single NGC neurons in awake behaving animals showed that these neurons could respond to all sensory modalities tested [15]. Moreover in animals standing quietly, neurons were observed to start firing just before movement [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Electrophysiological Properties of Nucleus Gigantocellularis Neurons Correlated with Increased CNS Arousal

Liu¹,

Pfaff²,

Calderon³

et al. 2016

Dev Neurosci

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Many types of data have suggested that neurons in the nucleus gigantocellularis (NGC) in the medullary reticular formation are critically important for CNS arousal and behavioral responsiveness. To extend this topic to a developmental framework, whole-cell patch-recorded characteristics of NGC neurons in brainstem slices and measures of arousal-dependent locomotion of postnatal day 3 (P3) to P6 mouse pups were measured and compared. These neuronal characteristics developed in an orderly, statistically significant monotonic manner over the course of P3-P6: (1) proportion of neurons capable of firing action potential (AP) trains, (2) AP amplitude, (3) AP threshold, (4) amplitude of inward and outward currents, (5) amplitude of negative peak currents, and (6) steady state currents (in I-V plot). These measurements reflect the maturation of sodium and certain potassium channels. Similarly, all measures of locomotion, latency to first movement, total locomotion duration, net locomotion distance, and total quiescence time also developed monotonically over P3-P6. Most importantly, electrophysiological and behavioral measures were significantly correlated. Interestingly, the behavioral measures were not correlated with frequency of excitatory postsynaptic currents or the proportion of neurons showing these currents, responses to a battery of neurotransmitter agents, or rapid activating potassium currents (including I_A). Considering the results here in the context of a large body of literature on NGC, we hypothesize that the developmental increase in NGC neuronal excitability participates in causing the increased behavioral responsivity during the postnatal period from P3 to P6.

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“…1). Regarding their sensory inputs, studied electrophysiologically, some of the neurons in this region have the large receptive fields and multimodal response characteristics expected of neurons serving GA (6)(7)(8). Likewise, their involvement in the control over a wide variety of motor activities suggests their capacity to subserve GA (9).…”

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confidence: 99%

Quantitative descriptions of generalized arousal, an elementary function of the vertebrate brain

Quinkert

Vimal

Weil

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We review a concept of the most primitive, fundamental function of the vertebrate CNS, generalized arousal (GA). Three independent lines of evidence indicate the existence of GA: statistical, genetic, and mechanistic. Here we ask, is this concept amenable to quantitative analysis? Answering in the affirmative, four quantitative approaches have proven useful: (i) factor analysis, (ii) information theory, (iii) deterministic chaos, and (iv) application of a Gaussian equation. It strikes us that, to date, not just one but at least four different quantitative approaches seem necessary for describing different aspects of scientific work on GA. In this brief review, we present a global concept of brain function, generalized arousal (GA), and illustrate the application of four mathematical methods to its description and analysis. Here, in order of the sections below, we (i) use factor analysis to help prove that GA actually exists; (ii) use information theory to characterize stimuli that elicit GA; (iii) resort to the logistic equation to speculate on how GA might make use of nonlinear dynamics; and (iv) having studied GA in the context of the hunger-induced activation of behavior, characterize the behavioral data with a simple Gaussian.We have proposed that the most powerful and essential activity in any vertebrate nervous system is GA (1). As conceived, GA is universal and fundamental, initiating the activation of all behavioral responses in all vertebrate animals. The operational definition of GA is that a more-aroused animal or human is (i) more responsive to sensory stimuli in all modalities; (ii) more active motorically; and (iii) more reactive emotionally (1). GA's performance requirements are listed in Table 1.Evidence for the Existence of GA of the CNS Three independent lines of evidence indicate that generalized CNS arousal actually exists: statistical, genetic, and mechanistic.The first line of evidence derives from recently reported behavioral results that show, statistically, the influence of GA (2). We did several experiments with mice, which tapped all three components of the operational definition of GA: S (sensory alertness) measured as motor activity in response to sensory stimuli of various modalities; M (motor activity) measured as spontaneous home cage motor activity; and E (emotional reactivity) measured as motor activity and freezing behavior in a conditioned fear paradigm. These three parameters did not covary either genetically or phenotypically. We analyzed the data using factor analysis, which probes the covariance structure of a large data set-in our case it tabulates the statistical relations among various arousal-related response measures. Factor analysis as applied here "lets the subject (in our case, a mouse) tell us" the structure of its arousal functions. Application of this analysis to our five sets of experimental data allowed us to estimate the contribution of GA, measured as the most generalized, least specific factor, as revealed by an unrotated covariance matrix and a forced one...

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Multimodal Sensory Responses of Nucleus Reticularis Gigantocellularis and the Responses' Relation to Cortical and Motor Activation

Cited by 49 publications

References 68 publications

Generalized CNS arousal: An elementary force within the vertebrate nervous system

Generalized CNS arousal: An elementary force within the vertebrate nervous system

Development of Electrophysiological Properties of Nucleus Gigantocellularis Neurons Correlated with Increased CNS Arousal

Quantitative descriptions of generalized arousal, an elementary function of the vertebrate brain

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