RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Impaired trigeminal control of ingestive behavior in the Prrxl1- / - mouse is associated with a lemniscal-biased orosensory deafferentation JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2021.10.07.463562 DO 10.1101/2021.10.07.463562 A1 Admir Resulaj A1 Jeannette Wu A1 Mitra J. Z. Hartmann A1 Paul Feinstein A1 H. Phillip Zeigler YR 2021 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/07/2021.10.07.463562.abstract AB Although peripheral deafferentation studies have demonstrated a critical role for trigeminal afference in modulating the orosensorimotor control of eating and drinking, the central trigeminal pathways mediating that control, as well as the timescale of control, remain to be elucidated. In rodents, three ascending somatosensory pathways process and relay orofacial mechanosensory input: the lemniscal, paralemniscal, and extralemniscal. Two of these pathways (the lemniscal and extralemniscal) exhibit highly structured topographic representations of the orofacial sensory surface, as exemplified by the one-to-one somatotopic mapping between vibrissae on the animals’ face and barrelettes in brainstem, barreloids in thalamus, and barrels in cortex. Here we use the Prrxl1 knockout mouse model to investigate ingestive behavior deficits associated with disruption of the lemniscal pathway. The Prrxl1 deletion disrupts somatotopic patterning and axonal projections throughout the lemniscal pathway but spares patterning in the extralemniscal nucleus. Our data reveal an imprecise and inefficient ingestive phenotype with deficits that span timescales from milliseconds to months, tightly linking trigeminal input with ingestion, from moment-to-moment consummatory to long term appetitive control. We suggest that ordered assembly of trigeminal sensory information along the lemniscal pathway is critical for the rapid and precise modulation of motor circuits driving eating and drinking action sequences.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.