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Layer-specific interhemispheric functional connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of rats: resting state electrophysiology and fMRI studies

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Abstract

The spontaneous cerebral hemodynamic fluctuations observed during the resting state have been frequently visualized using functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI). However, the neuronal populations and neuroelectric characteristics underlying the functional connectivity of cerebrohemodynamic activities are poorly understood. We investigated the characteristics of bi-hemispheric functional connectivity via electrophysiology and rsfMRI in the primary sensory cortex of rats anesthetized by α-chloralose. Unlike the evoked responses, the spontaneous electrophysiological activity was concentrated in the infragranular layers and could be classified into subtypes with distinctive current sources and sinks. Both neuroelectric and rsfMRI signals were interhemispherically correlated in a layer-specific manner, suggesting that there are independent neural inputs to infragranular and granular/supragranular layers. The majority of spontaneous electrophysiological activities were bilaterally paired with delays of up to ~50 ms between each pair. The variable interhemispheric delay implies the involvement of indirect, multi-neural pathways. Our findings demonstrated the diverse activity patterns of layer-specific electrophysiological substrates and suggest the recruitment of multiple, non-specific brain regions in construction of interhemispheric functional connectivity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Drs. Jitendra Sharma and Robert Haslinger for their valuable comments on this manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (Grant Number 5R01EB002066, R01 EB001954) and a Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant that was funded by the Korean government (Grant number NRF-2006-2005399, M10644000028-06N4400-02810).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 305-701, South Korea

      Kwangyeol Baek, Woo Hyun Shim & Jaeseung Jeong

    2. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 13th St., Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA

      Kwangyeol Baek, Woo Hyun Shim, Bruce R. Rosen, David Boas, Maria Franceschini & Young R. Kim

    3. Center for Neural Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

      Harsha Radhakrishnan

    4. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

      Bruce R. Rosen, David Boas, Maria Franceschini & Young R. Kim

    5. Department of Biomedical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA

      Bharat B. Biswal

    6. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea

      Young R. Kim

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    1. Kwangyeol Baek
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    Correspondence to Jaeseung Jeong or Young R. Kim.

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    K. Baek and W. H. Shim contributed equally to this study.

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    Baek, K., Shim, W.H., Jeong, J. et al. Layer-specific interhemispheric functional connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of rats: resting state electrophysiology and fMRI studies. Brain Struct Funct 221, 2801–2815 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-015-1073-0

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