Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 39, Issue 4, Pages 692-704Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1467-18.2018
Keywords
driver pathway; motor cortex; posterior medial nucleus; sensorimotor; somatosensory cortex; trans-thalamic
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [NS094184, EY022388]
- National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [1106370]
- National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [1106370] Funding Source: NHMRC
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We now know that sensory processing in cortex occurs not only via direct communication between primary to secondary areas, but also via their parallel cortico-thalamo-cortical (i.e.,trans-thalamic) pathways. Both corticocortical and trans-thalamic pathways mainly signal through glutamatergic class 1 (driver) synapses, which have robust and efficient synaptic dynamics suited for the transfer of information such as receptive field properties, suggesting the importance of class 1 synapses in feedforward, hierarchical processing. However, such a parallel arrangement has only been identified in sensory cortical areas: visual, somatosensory, and auditory. To test the generality of trans-thalamic pathways, we sought to establish its presence beyond purely sensory cortices to determine whether there is a trans-thalamic pathway parallel to the established primary somatosensory (S1) to primary motor (M1) pathway. We used trans-synaptic viral tracing, optogenetics in slice preparations, and bouton size analysis in the mouse (both sexes) to document that a circuit exists from layer 5 of S1 through the posterior medial nucleus of the thalamus to M1 with glutamatergic class 1 properties. This represents a hitherto unknown, robust sensorimotor linkage and suggests that the arrangement of parallel direct and trans-thalamic corticocortical circuits may be present as a general feature of cortical functioning.
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