Patterns of unit activity in the rostral thalamus of cats related to short-latency discrimination between different auditory stimuli

Woody, Charles D.; Gruen, Ehud; Melamed, Ofer; Chizhevsky, V

doi:10.1523/jneurosci.11-01-00048.1991

Cited by 14 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The plotted values are normalized relative to a 300 msec prestimulus baseline (see Materials and Methods). riade et al, 1988;Kandler and Herbert, 1991) and the cochlear nucleus (Woody et al, 1991).…”

Section: Spared and Deleted Neuronal Activity In Rabbits With Lesionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medial Geniculate Lesions Block Amygdalar and Cingulothalamic Learning-Related Neuronal Activity

Poremba

Gabriel

1997

J. Neurosci.

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This study assessed the role of the thalamic medial geniculate (MG) nucleus in discriminative avoidance learning, wherein rabbits acquire a locomotory response to a tone [conditioned stimulus (CS)ϩ] to avoid a foot shock, and they learn to ignore a different tone (CSϪ) not predictive of foot shock. Limbic (anterior and medial dorsal) thalamic, cingulate cortical, or amygdalar lesions severely impair acquisition, and neurons in these areas develop training-induced activity (TIA): more firing to the CSϩ than to the CSϪ. MG neurons exhibit TIA during learning and project to the amygdala. The MG neurons may supply afferents essential for amygdalar and cingulothalamic TIA and for avoidance learning. To test this hypothesis, bilateral electrolytic or excitotoxic ibotenic acid MG nuclear lesions were induced, and multiunit recording electrodes were chronically implanted into the anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, the anterior-ventral and medial-dorsal thalamic nuclei, and the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala before training. Learning was severely impaired and TIA was abolished in all areas in rabbits with lesions. Thus learning and TIA require the integrity of the MG nucleus. Only damage in the medial MG division was significantly correlated with the learning deficit. The lesions abolished the sensory response of amygdalar neurons, and they attenuated (but did not eliminate) the sensory response of cingulothalamic neurons, suggesting the existence of extra geniculate sources of auditory transmission to the cingulothalamic areas. Key words: limbic thalamus; cingulate cortex; amygdala; learning; instrumental conditioning; anterior ventral nucleus; medial dorsal nucleusThere is currently a great interest in the neural circuitry underlying aversively motivated learning (for review, see Davis, 1992;Gabriel, 1993;Lennartz and Weinberger, 1994;LeDoux, 1995;McGaugh et al., 1995;. A central role of amygdalar neurons is indicated by findings that amygdala lesions impair the acquisition of conditioned immobility (LeDoux et al., 1988; Fanselow and K im, 1994;LeDoux, 1995), autonomic responding (Blanchard and Blanchard, 1972;Spevack et al., 1975;Kapp et al., 1979;Gentile et al., 1986;Iwata et al., 1986;Helmstetter, 1992) and fear-potentiated startle behavior (Davis, 1986(Davis, , 1992Hitchcock and Davis, 1987;Sananes and Davis, 1992). Also, amygdalar neurons exhibit associative, training-induced activity (TIA) during Pavlovian conditioning (Umemoto and Olds, 1975;Applegate et al., 1982;Pascoe and Kapp, 1985;Nishijo et al., 1988; Muramoto et al., 1993;McEchron et al., 1995;Quirk et al., 1995).An involvement of the medial geniculate (MG) nucleus in aversively motivated learning is indicated by the observation of TIA in the medial division of the MG nucleus (MGm) (Olds et al., 1972;Gabriel et al., 1975;Gabriel et al., 1976;Ryugo and Weinberger, 1978;Birt and Olds, 1981;Weinberger, 1982;Edeline, 1990;Edeline and Weinberger, 1992;McEchron et al., 1995), and by impaired conditioning in animals with MG lesions (Iwata et al., 198...

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Section: Spared and Deleted Neuronal Activity In Rabbits With Lesionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medial Geniculate Lesions Block Amygdalar and Cingulothalamic Learning-Related Neuronal Activity

Poremba

Gabriel

1997

J. Neurosci.

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“…Although the comparative magnitudes of potentiation at each relay were not specifically investigated in this study, it was clear from the area charts in Figure 2 that a substantial amount of the potentiation of the peak response to the CS was mediated by the DCN and SDN. Other details of the potentiation at these and some of the other nuclei have been explored in earlier reports (Woody et al, 1970(Woody et al, , 1991a(Woody et al, , b, 1992(Woody et al, , 1998. Table 1 compares the Pearson correlation coefficients before and after conditioning between the mean patterns of unit activity at each different auditory relay and (1) the rectified sound pattern of the click CS or (2) the averaged pattern of the concurrent, rectified EMG activity (Motor Resp.).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

A glimpse of the brain transforming a sensory signal into a motor response

Becker

Raheja²,

Woody³

2002

Somatosensory & Motor Research

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Averages were made of neuronal spike activity recorded successively from eight relay regions along the auditorimotor pathway of naive cats and cats conditioned to blink in response to a 70 dB click conditioned stimulus (CS). It was hypothesized that the patterns of activity could be distinguished as sensory or motor by differences in their relationship to the pattern of the acoustic CS vs that of the conditioned response (CR). If so, it was also hypothesized that the acoustic stimulus would be better expressed at early auditorimotor relays and the motor response at later relays along the pathway. To test these hypotheses, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the mean patterns of unit activity at each of the auditorimotor relays and (1) the rectified sound pattern of the CS and (2) the averaged, rectified electromyographic (EMG) activity of the muscles (orbicularis oculis) that produced the CR. In both naive and conditioned cats, there were significant positive correlations between the patterns of spike activity and the sound at early relays along the auditorimotor pathway such as the cochlear nucleus and inferior colliculus. In the conditioned animals, the spike activity of later nuclei in the auditorimotor pathway, such as the rostral thalamus and the motor cortex, had the highest positive correlations with the motor response. These correlations were low in the naive animals. Thus, the mean patterns of spike activity along the auditorimotor pathway appeared to distinguish the sound from the motor response and provided a glimpse of the process supporting transformation of the CS into the incipient CR.

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State-Dependent Plasticity of Neural Responses to 70dB Clicks Along Central, Primary, Auditory Transmission Pathways

Woody

1997

Acoustical Signal Processing in the Central Auditory System

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Patterns of unit activity in the rostral thalamus of cats related to short-latency discrimination between different auditory stimuli

Cited by 14 publications

References 46 publications

Medial Geniculate Lesions Block Amygdalar and Cingulothalamic Learning-Related Neuronal Activity

Medial Geniculate Lesions Block Amygdalar and Cingulothalamic Learning-Related Neuronal Activity

A glimpse of the brain transforming a sensory signal into a motor response

State-Dependent Plasticity of Neural Responses to 70dB Clicks Along Central, Primary, Auditory Transmission Pathways

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