Journal
NEUROIMAGE
Volume 39, Issue 3, Pages 1307-1313Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.09.039
Keywords
fMRI; human; inhibition; lateral interaction; psychophysics; somatosensory cortex
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Simultaneous stimulation of two adjacent fingers above sensory perception threshold (supraliminal stimulation) leads to an inhibitory interaction effect on responses in primary somatosensory cortex (SI). Moreover, during electrical finger stimulation closely below threshold for conscious perception (subliminal stimulation) inhibitory interneurons in cortical layer 4 are assumed to be activated preferentially as compared to excitatory interneurons. Using fMRI in humans, here we show that interspersed subliminal electrical stimulation of an adjacent finger reduces the response to target finger stimulation in contralateral SI. This effect was shown in a complementary study to be associated behaviorally with a diminished detectability of test pulses on the target ringer. We propose the mechanism underlying this lateral inhibitory effect to be related to a representational overlap of inhibitory interneurons in SI based on the divergence of thalamocortical feedforward projections, or to intracortical lateral inhibitory projections targeting juxtaposed receptive fields, or both. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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