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Imaging the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Supragranular Activity in the Rat Somatosensory Cortex in Response to Stimulation of the Paws
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Imaging the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Supragranular Activity in the Rat Somatosensory Cortex in Response to Stimulation of the Paws

M. L. Morales-Botello, J. Aguilar and G. Foffani
PloS one, v 7(7), pp e40174-e40174
19 Jul 2012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040174
PMID: 22829873
url
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040174&type=printableView
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040174View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Multidisciplinary Sciences Science & Technology Science & Technology - Other Topics
We employed voltage-sensitive dye (VSD) imaging to investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of the responses of the supragranular somatosensory cortex to stimulation of the four paws in urethane-anesthetized rats. We obtained the following main results. (1) Stimulation of the contralateral forepaw evoked VSD responses with greater amplitude and smaller latency than stimulation of the contralateral hindpaw, and ipsilateral VSD responses had a lower amplitude and greater latency than contralateral responses. (2) While the contralateral stimulation initially activated only one focus, the ipsilateral stimulation initially activated two foci: one focus was typically medial to the focus activated by contralateral stimulation and was stereotaxically localized in the motor cortex; the other focus was typically posterior to the focus activated by contralateral stimulation and was stereotaxically localized in the somatosensory cortex. (3) Forepaw and hindpaw somatosensory stimuli activated large areas of the sensorimotor cortex, well beyond the forepaw and hindpaw somatosensory areas of classical somatotopic maps, and forepaw stimuli activated larger cortical areas with greater activation velocity than hindpaw stimuli. (4) Stimulation of the forepaw and hindpaw evoked different cortical activation dynamics: forepaw responses displayed a clear medial directionality, whereas hindpaw responses were much more uniform in all directions. In conclusion, this work offers a complete spatio-temporal map of the supragranular VSD cortical activation in response to stimulation of the paws, showing important somatotopic differences between contralateral and ipsilateral maps as well as differences in the spatio-temporal activation dynamics in response to forepaw and hindpaw stimuli.

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