The whisking oscillator circuit
Name
nihms-1879084.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
4.93 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9850bf39bec22ed29a2ab61d29bef04f
Author(s)
Takatoh, Jun
Prevosto, Vincent
Thompson, PM
Lu, Jinghao
Chung, Leeyup
Harrahill, Andrew
Li, Shun
Zhao, Shengli
He, Zhigang
Golomb, David
Date Issued
2022
Journal
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Takatoh, Jun, Prevosto, Vincent, Thompson, PM, Lu, Jinghao, Chung, Leeyup et al. 2022. "The whisking oscillator circuit." Nature, 609 (7927).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Central oscillators are primordial neural circuits that generate and control rhythmic movements1,2. Mechanistic understanding of these circuits requires genetic identification of the oscillator neurons and their synaptic connections to enable targeted electrophysiological recording and causal manipulation during behaviours. However, such targeting remains a challenge with mammalian systems. Here we delimit the oscillator circuit that drives rhythmic whisking-a motor action that is central to foraging and active sensing in rodents3,4. We found that the whisking oscillator consists of parvalbumin-expressing inhibitory neurons located in the vibrissa intermediate reticular nucleus (vIRtPV) in the brainstem. vIRtPV neurons receive descending excitatory inputs and form recurrent inhibitory connections among themselves. Silencing vIRtPV neurons eliminated rhythmic whisking and resulted in sustained vibrissae protraction. In vivo recording of opto-tagged vIRtPV neurons in awake mice showed that these cells spike tonically when animals are at rest, and transition to rhythmic bursting at the onset of whisking, suggesting that rhythm generation is probably the result of network dynamics, as opposed to intrinsic cellular properties. Notably, ablating inhibitory synaptic inputs to vIRtPV neurons quenched their rhythmic bursting, impaired the tonic-to-bursting transition and abolished regular whisking. Thus, the whisking oscillator is an all-inhibitory network and recurrent synaptic inhibition has a key role in its rhythmogenesis.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41586-022-05144-8
