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PMID: 16624962 Published · ppublish English Comparative Study Journal Article Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Noradrenergic activation amplifies bottom-up and top-down signal-to-noise ratios in sensory thalamus.

The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience ·Vol. 26 ·No. 16 ·2006-04-19 ·Pages 4426-36

Hirata A, Aguilar J, Castro-Alamancos MA

Abstract

Thalamocortical cells receive sensory signals via primary sensory afferents and cortical signals via corticothalamic afferents. These signals are influenced by a variety of neuromodulators that are released in the thalamus during specific behavioral states. Hence, different neuromodulators may set different thalamic modes of sensory information processing. We found that noradrenergic activation affects sensory and corticothalamic signals in the whisker thalamus differently than cholinergic activation. Whereas cholinergic activation increases the spontaneous firing (noise) and enlarges the receptive fields of ventroposterior medial thalamus (VPM) cells, noradrenergic activation decreases spontaneous firing and focuses receptive fields. Consequently, for sensory signals, noradrenergic activation sets bottom-up thalamic processing to a focused and noise-free excitatory receptive field, which contrasts with the broad and noisy excitatory receptive field characteristic of cholinergic activation. For corticothalamic signals, noradrenergic activation sets top-down processing to a noise-free high-frequency signal detection mode, whereas cholinergic activation produces a noisy broadband signal detection mode. The effects of noradrenergic activation on signal-to-noise ratios of VPM cells were found to be mediated by nucleus reticularis thalamic (nRt) cells. Hence, a major role of nRt cells is to regulate the noise level of thalamocortical cells during sensory processing. In conclusion, different modulators establish distinct modes of bottom-up and top-down information processing in the sensory thalamus.

MeSH Terms
Action Potentials/drug effects,physiology Animals Carbachol/pharmacology Neurons, Afferent/drug effects,physiology Norepinephrine/pharmacology,physiology Rats Rats, Sprague-Dawley Thalamus/drug effects,physiology
Chemicals
Carbachol Norepinephrine
Authors & Affiliations
3 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Hirata Akio
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129, USA.
Aguilar Juan
Castro-Alamancos Manuel A
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Article Info
Journal
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Abbr.
J Neurosci
ISSN
1529-2401
DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5298-05.2006
Published
2006-04-19
Pages
4426-36
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
8102140
PMCID
PMC6674001
Subset
IM
Grants
NINDS NIH HHS · R01 NS046305 · United States
NINDS NIH HHS · R01 NS046305-04 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5298-05.2006 PMC Full Text View journal details
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