Projection from the Amygdala to the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus Amplifies Cortical Sound Responses

Aizenberg, Mark; Rolón‐Martínez, Solymar; Pham, Tuan D.; Rao, Winnie; Haas, Julie S.; Geffen, Maria N.

doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2019.06.050

Cited by 40 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…However, transmission modulation of the pulvinar by the amygdala through verified projections onto the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus (TRN; Zikopoulos and Barbas, 2012), acting as an ''emotional attention'' mechanism (John et al, 2016), is highly plausible. This idea is further strengthened with evidence from optogenetic manipulation of amygdala activity producing strong contrast gain effects (Aizenberg et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Occipital Magnocellular VEP Non-linearities Show a Short Latency Interaction Between Contrast and Facial Emotion

Crewther

2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The magnocellular system has been implicated in the rapid processing of facial emotions, such as fear. Of the various anatomical possibilities, the retino-colliculo-pulvinar route to the amygdala is currently favored. However, it is not clear whether and when amygdala arousal activates the primary visual cortex (V1). Non-linear visual evoked potentials provide a well-accepted technique for examining temporal processing in the magnocellular and parvocellular pathways in the visual cortex. Here, we investigated the relationship between facial emotion processing and the separable magnocellular (K2.1) and parvocellular (K2.2) components of the second-order non-linear multifocal visual evoked potential responses recorded from the occipital scalp (O Z). Stimuli comprised pseudorandom brightening/darkening of fearful, happy, neutral faces (or no face) with surround patches decorrelated from the central face-bearing patch. For the central patch, the spatial contrast of the faces was 30% while the modulation of the per-pixel brightening/darkening was uniformly 10% or 70%. From 14 neurotypical young adults, we found a significant interaction between emotion and contrast in the magnocellularly driven K2.1 peak amplitudes, with greater K2.1 amplitudes for fearful (vs. happy) faces at 70% temporal contrast condition. Taken together, our findings suggest that facial emotional information is present in early V1 processing as conveyed by the M pathway, and more activated for fearful as opposed to happy and neutral faces. An explanation is offered in terms of the contest between feedback and response gain modulation models.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Occipital Magnocellular VEP Non-linearities Show a Short Latency Interaction Between Contrast and Facial Emotion

Crewther

2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Meanwhile, substantive evidence has shown that thalamocortical networks play an essential role in GTCS ( Bernhardt et al, 2009 ). Notably, there are complex fiber projections between the thalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus ( McDonald and Mott, 2017 ; Aizenberg et al, 2019 ). Consequently, shrinkage of the left amygdala in DR patients can be understood and explained.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atrophy in the Left Amygdala Predicted Drug Responses in Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy Patients With Tonic–Clonic Seizures

Wang

Chen

et al. 2021

Front. Neurosci.

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We aimed to determine the alterations in the subcortical structures of patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy with tonic–clonic seizures (IGE-GTCS) via MRI volumetry and vertex-based shape analysis and to evaluate the relationships between MRI measures and drug responses. In a follow-up sample of 48 patients with IGE-GTCS and 48 matched normal controls (NCs), high-resolution 3D T1WI was performed at baseline. After 1 year of follow-up, 31 patients were classified as seizure free (SF) and 17 as drug resistant (DR). The volumes of subcortical structures were extracted, and vertex-based shape analysis was performed using FSL-Integrated Registration and Segmentation Toolbox (FSL-FIRST). Comparisons among groups were calculated adjusting for covariates [age, sex, and intracranial volume (ICV)]. Analysis of the relationships among imaging biomarkers along with frequency and duration was assessed using partial correlations. The differential imaging indicators were used as features in a linear support vector machine (LSVM). The DR group displayed significant regional atrophy in the volume of the left amygdala compared with NCs (p = 0.004, false discovery rate corrected) and SF patients (p = 0.029, uncorrected). Meanwhile, vertex-based shape analysis showed focal inward deformation in the basolateral subregion of the left amygdala in DR compared with the results for SF and NC (p < 0.05, FWE corrected). There were significant correlations between the volume changes and seizure frequency (r = −0.324, p = 0.030) and between shape (r = −0.438, p = 0.003) changes and seizure frequency. Moreover, the volume of the left thalamus in the DR group was significantly correlated with seizure frequency (r = −0.689, p = 0.006). The SVM results revealed areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.82, 0.68, and 0.88 for the classification between SF and DR, between SF and NC, and between DR and NC, respectively. This study indicates the presence of focal atrophy in the basolateral region of the left amygdala in patients with IGE drug resistance; this finding may help predict drug responses and suggests a potential therapeutic target.

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“…For instance, there is evidence that higher-order TC neurons are more intrinsically bursty than sensory TC neurons (Wei et al, 2011;Ramcharan et al, 2005). Thalamic burst firing can profoundly shape information transmission and may be under top-down control (Wolfart et al, 2005;Whitmire et al, 2016;Alitto et al, 2019;Aizenberg et al, 2019) (Figure S8). Therefore, modeling circuit parameters which covary according to a hierarchical organization, from sensory to higher-order thalamic nuclei, could enable investigation into dynamical and computational specialization of thalamic reticular circuits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…with different strengths of top-down modulation (excitation) to TC. As shown in the experimental results, RE neurons also can receive excitatory modulatory inputs (Briggs and Usrey, 2008;Ahrens et al, 2015;Aizenberg et al, 2019). Thus, we also investigated the effect of top-down excitatory modulation through RE neurons shown in the following panels C-H. modulation strength, with top-down modulation via either inhibition to RE neurons (green) or via excitation to TC neurons (orange).…”

Section: Software Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 92%

Computational Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Thalamic Control of Attention

Lam

Wimmer

et al. 2020

Preprint

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SummaryThe thalamus is a key brain structure engaged in attentional functions, such as selectively amplifying task-relevant signals of one sensory modality while filtering distractors of another. To investigate computational mechanisms of attentional modulation, we developed a biophysically grounded thalamic reticular circuit model, comprising excitatory thalamocortical and inhibitory reticular neurons, which captures characteristic neurophysiological observations from the alert behaving animals. Top-down attentional control inputs onto reticular neurons effectively modulate thalamic gain and enhance downstream readout, to improve performance across detection, discrimination, and cross-modal task paradigms. Heterogeneity of thalamic responses plays an essential role in downstream decoding during attentional modulation. Dynamical systems analysis explains why reticular neurons are an especially potent site for top-down control, as implicated by experiments. Perturbation analysis reveals excitation-inhibition ratio as an effective parameter governing thalamic processing. These findings establish experimentally testable circuit mechanisms for attentional control in thalamus, with implications for distributed neural control of cognitive processing.

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Projection from the Amygdala to the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus Amplifies Cortical Sound Responses

Cited by 40 publications

References 63 publications

Occipital Magnocellular VEP Non-linearities Show a Short Latency Interaction Between Contrast and Facial Emotion

Occipital Magnocellular VEP Non-linearities Show a Short Latency Interaction Between Contrast and Facial Emotion

Atrophy in the Left Amygdala Predicted Drug Responses in Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy Patients With Tonic–Clonic Seizures

Computational Circuit Mechanisms Underlying Thalamic Control of Attention

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