Atividade multimodal no córtex sensorial primário de ratos

• Ano de defesa: 2010
• Autor(a) principal: Caixeta, Fabio Viegas
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte; BR; UFRN; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicobiologia; Estudos de Comportamento; Psicologia Fisiológica
• Palavras-chave em Português: Modalidade cruzada; processamento neural distribuído.; Crossmodal activity; distributed neural processing.; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::BIOLOGIA GERAL
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/jspui/handle/123456789/17290

The currently accepted model of sensory processing states that different senses are processed in parallel, and that the activity of specific cortical regions define the sensorial modality perceived by the subject. In this work we used chronic multielectrode extracellular recordings to investigate to which extent neurons in the visual and tactile primary cortices (V1 and S1) of anesthetized rats would respond to sensory modalities not traditionaly associated with these cortices. Visual stimulation yielded 87% of responsive neurons in V1, while 82% of S1 neurons responded to tactile stimulation. In the same stimulation sessions, we found 23% of V1 neurons responding to tactile stimuli and 22% of S1 neurons responding to visual stimuli. Our data supports an increasing body of evidence that indicates the existence multimodal processing in primary sensory cortices. Our data challenge the unimodal sensory processing paradigm, and suggest the need of a reinterpretation of the currently accepted model of cortical hierarchy.