Abstract
Rodents actively whisk their vibrissae, which, when they come in contact with surrounding objects, enables rodents to gather spatial information about the environment. Cortical motor command of whisking is crucial for the control of vibrissa movement. Using awake and head-fixed rats, we investigated the correlations between axonal projection patterns and firing properties in identified layer 5 neurons in the motor cortex, which are associated with vibrissa movement. We found that cortical neurons that sent axons to the brainstem fired preferentially during large-amplitude vibrissa movements and that corticocallosal neurons exhibited a high firing rate during small vibrissa movements or during a quiet state. The differences between these two corticofugal circuits may be related to the mechanisms of motor-associated information processing.
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
This work was supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 16K16123 (to T.T.), 15H01430, 16H04663, 16H01426, and 17K19451 (to H.H.), and 23135519, 24500409, and 15H04266 (to T.F.) and partially by the program for Brain Mapping by Integrated Neurotechnologies for Disease Studies (Brain/MINDS) from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED).
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