RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Microstimulation of sensory cortex engages natural sensory representations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.11.09.515803
DO 10.1101/2022.11.09.515803
A1 Ravi Pancholi
A1 Andrew Sun-Yan
A1 Simon Peron
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/09/2022.11.09.515803.abstract
AB Cortical activity patterns occupy a small subset of possible network states. If this is due to intrinsic network properties, microstimulation of cortex should evoke activity patterns resembling those observed during natural sensory input. Here, we use optical microstimulation of virally transfected layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in mouse primary vibrissal somatosensory cortex to compare artificially evoked activity with natural activity evoked by whisker touch and movement (‘whisking’). We find that photostimulation engages touch but not whisking responsive neurons more than expected by chance. Neurons that respond to photostimulation and touch or to touch alone exhibit higher spontaneous pairwise correlations than purely photoresponsive neurons. Exposure to several days of simultaneous touch and optogenetic stimulation raises both overlap and spontaneous activity correlations among touch and photoresponsive neurons. We thus find that cortical microstimulation engages existing cortical representations and that repeated co-presentation of natural and artificial stimulation enhances this effect.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.