Abstract

Purpose/aim of the study

Whiskers are important sensory organs that play a key role in rodents' discriminative and exploration behaviours and unilateral injuries of the somatosensory cortex related to whisker barrel cortex can change the activity of neurons in the intact contralateral barrel cortex. We evaluated the effects of unilateral mechanical lesion of right barrel cortex on novel texture discrimination in behavioural test and neuronal responses of left barrel cortex.

Materials and methods

Ten days after a unilateral mechanical lesion in the right barrel cortex, adult male rats were experimented regarding three paired different textures in novel texture discrimination test dependent on whiskers. In addition, responses of left barrel cortical neurons to controlled deflections of right whiskers were recorded using extracellular single-unit recordings technique.

Results

Data analysis showed that the discrimination ratio and preference indexes as criteria to find a novel texture significantly decreased in the lesion group compared to the intact rats (p < .05). In electrophysiological level, the barrel neural cortical spontaneous activity and the ON and OFF response magnitude of intact barrel cortex neurons in the lesion group decreased compared to the intact group (p < .05).

Conclusions

The present study showed that unilateral mechanical lesion in the rats' barrel cortex cause a decrease in their abilities for discriminating textures, as well as, the anaesthetized rats whose response properties of intact barrel cortical area changed to whisker deflection, too. These changes can influence on the ability of rats to differentiate textures.

中文翻译：

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桶状皮质局灶性单侧机械损伤损害大鼠辨别纹理的能力

摘要

研究目的/目的

胡须是重要的感觉器官，在啮齿动物的辨别和探索行为中起关键作用，与胡须桶状皮层相关的躯体感觉皮层的单侧损伤可以改变完整的对侧桶状皮层神经元的活动。我们评估了右桶皮层的单侧机械损伤对行为测试中的新纹理辨别和左桶皮层的神经元反应的影响。

材料和方法

在右侧桶状皮层发生单侧机械损伤 10 天后，在依赖于胡须的新型纹理辨别测试中，对成年雄性大鼠进行了三对不同纹理的实验。此外，使用细胞外单单元记录技术记录了左桶状皮质神经元对右胡须受控偏转的反应。

结果

数据分析表明，与完整大鼠相比，病变组的辨别率和偏好指数作为寻找新质地的标准显着降低（p < .05）。在电生理水平上，与完整组相比，病变组的桶状神经皮层自发活动和完整桶状皮层神经元的开和关反应幅度降低（p < .05）。

结论

目前的研究表明，大鼠桶状皮层的单侧机械损伤导致其辨别纹理的能力下降，并且麻醉大鼠的完整桶状皮层区域的反应特性也变为胡须偏转。这些变化会影响大鼠区分纹理的能力。