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Excitatory Crossmodal Input to a Widespread Population of Primary Sensory Cortical Neurons

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Abstract

Crossmodal information processing in sensory cortices has been reported in sparsely distributed neurons under normal conditions and can undergo experience- or activity-induced plasticity. Given the potential role in brain function as indicated by previous reports, crossmodal connectivity in the sensory cortex needs to be further explored. Using perforated whole-cell recording in anesthetized adult rats, we found that almost all neurons recorded in the primary somatosensory, auditory, and visual cortices exhibited significant membrane-potential responses to crossmodal stimulation, as recorded when brain activity states were pharmacologically down-regulated in light anesthesia. These crossmodal cortical responses were excitatory and subthreshold, and further seemed to be relayed primarily by the sensory thalamus, but not the sensory cortex, of the stimulated modality. Our experiments indicate a sensory cortical presence of widespread excitatory crossmodal inputs, which might play roles in brain functions involving crossmodal information processing or plasticity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Drs. J. Tsien, L. Zhang, Y. Zhou, and J. Du for suggestions and comments on this work, and Dr. X. Yuan for the help with the tracing experiments. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970957 and 31471078), the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission (19ZR1416600), and funding from 2021-JCJQ-JJ-1089.

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Author notes

  1. Yuan-Jie Xiao, Lidan Wang, and Yu-Zhang Liu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute and Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics of the Chinese Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Yuan-Jie Xiao, Lidan Wang, Yu-Zhang Liu, Jiayu Chen, Haoyu Zhang, Yan Gao, Zheng Zhao & Zhiru Wang

  2. Department of Neurosurgery, Third Affiliated Hospital of the Navy Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Hua He

  3. Department of Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, 15260, USA

    Yu-Zhang Liu

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  1. Yuan-Jie Xiao
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Correspondence to Zheng Zhao or Zhiru Wang.

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Xiao, YJ., Wang, L., Liu, YZ. et al. Excitatory Crossmodal Input to a Widespread Population of Primary Sensory Cortical Neurons. Neurosci. Bull. 38, 1139–1152 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-022-00855-4

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