Sensorimotor strategies and neuronal representations for shape discrimination

Rodgers, Chris C.; Nogueira, Ramon; Pil, B Christina; Greeman, Esther A.; Park, Jung M.; Hong, Y. Kate; Fusi, Stefano; Bruno, Randy M.

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2021.05.019

Cited by 48 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 149 publications

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“…Although affective social touch begins at the skin’s surface, the molecular identity of sensory neurons in the skin that detect socially relevant signals and pass them to the central nervous system has remained unknown. Moreover, because touch itself is highly heterogeneous (i.e., discriminative touch to detect texture with our fingertips versus the affiliative touch during a hug from a friend), sensory perception is likely generated by different sets of neurons to provide specificity (Handler and Ginty, 2021; Li et al, 2011; Maksimovic et al, 2014; Neubarth et al, 2020; Rodgers et al, 2021; Seal et al, 2009b; Severson et al, 2017; Sharma et al, 2020). Armed with this information, where does one begin the search for touch neurons underlying social reward, including sexual receptivity?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of touch neurons underlying dopaminergic pleasurable touch and sexual receptivity

Middleton¹,

Schaffler

Succi

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Pleasurable touch during social behavior is the key to building familial bonds and meaningful connections. One form of social touch occurs during sex. Although sexual behavior is initiated in part by touch, and touch is ongoing throughout copulation, the identity and role of sensory neurons that transduce sexual touch remain completely unknown. A population of sensory neurons labeled by the G-protein coupled receptor Mrgprb4 detect stroking touch in mice. Here, we study the social relevance of this population by genetically engineering mice to allow activation or ablation of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons and reveal that these neurons are required for sexual receptivity and sufficient to activate reward circuitry. Even in social isolation, optogenetic stimulation of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons through the back skin is sufficient to induce a conditioned place preference and a striking lordosis-like copulatory posture in females. In the absence of Mrgprb4-lineage neurons, female mice no longer find male mounts rewarding: sexual receptivity is supplanted by aggression and a coincident decline in dopaminergic release in the mesolimbic reward pathway. In addition to sexual behavior, Mrgprb4-lineage neurons are also required for social postures induced by female-to-female back touch. Together, these findings reveal a skin-to-brain circuit encoding the rewarding quality of social touch.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of touch neurons underlying dopaminergic pleasurable touch and sexual receptivity

Middleton¹,

Schaffler

Succi

et al. 2021

Preprint

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show abstract

“…Such organization likely aids the integration of sensory information across the somatotopic map. The extensive axonal arborization within SSp-bfd is likely important for integrating sensory information across the whisker pad, necessary for determining object shape (Brown et al, 2021 ; Rodgers et al, 2021 ). The important projection to SSp-ul might be important during running where the ventral whiskers touch the ground before the forepaw as if to ensure safe placement of the paw during locomotion (Grant et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Axonal and Dendritic Morphology of Excitatory Neurons in Layer 2/3 Mouse Barrel Cortex Imaged Through Whole-Brain Two-Photon Tomography and Registered to a Digital Brain Atlas

et al. 2022

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Communication between cortical areas contributes importantly to sensory perception and cognition. On the millisecond time scale, information is signaled from one brain area to another by action potentials propagating across long-range axonal arborizations. Here, we develop and test methodology for imaging and annotating the brain-wide axonal arborizations of individual excitatory layer 2/3 neurons in mouse barrel cortex through single-cell electroporation and two-photon serial section tomography followed by registration to a digital brain atlas. Each neuron had an extensive local axon within the barrel cortex. In addition, individual neurons innervated subsets of secondary somatosensory cortex; primary somatosensory cortex for upper limb, trunk, and lower limb; primary and secondary motor cortex; visual and auditory cortical regions; dorsolateral striatum; and various fiber bundles. In the future, it will be important to assess if the diversity of axonal projections across individual layer 2/3 mouse barrel cortex neurons is accompanied by functional differences in their activity patterns.

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“…What are the consequences of having familiar identities represented in a higher dimensional space than novel identities? A number of studies have reported that the dimensionality of neural activity is linked to functional or behavioral complexity 23,27,[33][34][35] . Low-dimensional representations, and in particular disentangled representations 29 , are generally robust to noise and allow for generalization not possible with high dimensional representations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The geometry of hippocampal CA2 representations enables abstract coding of social familiarity and identity

Fusi

Boyle

Posani

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Social recognition memory encompasses two distinct processes: familiarity - the ability to rapidly distinguish a novel from familiar individual - and recollection, the recall of detailed episodic memories of prior encounters with familiar individuals. Although it is clear that the hippocampus is important for different forms of episodic memory, including spatial memory and social recognition memory, whether and how neural activity in this single brain region may be able to encode both social familiarity and social recollection remains unclear. We addressed such questions using microendoscopic calcium imaging from pyramidal neurons in the dorsal CA2 region of the hippocampus (dCA2), an area crucial for social recognition memory that encodes social and spatial information, as mice explored novel and familiar conspecifics. Here we demonstrate that the geometry of dCA2 representations in neural activity space enables social familiarity, social identity, and spatial information to be readily disentangled. Importantly, highly familiar littermates were encoded in higher-dimensional neural representations compared to novel individuals. As a result of this coding strategy, dCA2 neural activity was able to both provide an abstract, low-dimensional representation of social familiarity that could readily distinguish a novel from familiar individual and encode detailed episodic memories associated with familiar individuals.

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Sensorimotor strategies and neuronal representations for shape discrimination

Cited by 48 publications

References 149 publications

Identification of touch neurons underlying dopaminergic pleasurable touch and sexual receptivity

Identification of touch neurons underlying dopaminergic pleasurable touch and sexual receptivity

Axonal and Dendritic Morphology of Excitatory Neurons in Layer 2/3 Mouse Barrel Cortex Imaged Through Whole-Brain Two-Photon Tomography and Registered to a Digital Brain Atlas

The geometry of hippocampal CA2 representations enables abstract coding of social familiarity and identity

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