Advances have been made in the study of seasonal plasticity of the sensory cortical layer in adult animals

Robert Naumann, a researcher at the Institute of Brain Cognition and Brain Disease at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led a team that integrated international resources with scientists from Germany and Israel to study the seasonal changes in the structure and function of Etruscan Shrew's brain, explaining the natural mechanism by which more neurons in the animal's sensory cortical layer are suppressed by tactile signals in winter, revealing the natural mechanisms by which small skunks choose to "starve" their prey during winter hunting.
s little skunk is one of the smallest land mammals, belonging to thesection of the species, weighing only 2 grams, mainly in Eurasia 10 degrees to 40 degrees north latitude of the subtropical and temperage regions.
small skunkpetite body size, which leads to a very high metabolic rate, but is unable to store additional energy.
to adapt to the living environment,skunk evolved into daytime sleep and the "Dehnel's effect" phenomenon in winter.
To study the "Danell" phenomenon, the team used mr. McMA, in vitro double photon calcium imaging, in-place hybridization and other techniques to track changes in cell levels from general anatomy, from behavioral tracking to changes in the activity of cortical neurons, and to identify changes in the construction of animal cortical neurons in the winter and summer.
researchers used MRI to track multiple brain structures of the little skunkfor a long time, and found that the cerebral cortical layer is one of the most significantly reduced structures, with the thickness of the cortical layer shrinking by about 10 percent in winter compared to summer.
because ofsmall skunk and underdeveloped vision, predation relies mainly on tactile, which locates prey through a highly sensitive beard.
early research also found that the small skunkis a hunter, from touching the prey to biting the prey only a few hundred milliseconds, to do "second kill."
based on these phenomena, the team focused their research on thecortical cortical layer of small skunks.
study found that the thickness of the fourth layer of neurons in the somogenic cortical layer, the cortical subsurve, which is in high demand for energy metabolism, decreased by 28% in winter, while the thickness of other sub-layers did not change significantly.
in the fourth layer of the cortical layer, there are Parvalbumin-positive intermediate neurons (PV neurons), the main function of these inhibitory neurons is to inhibit the activity of peripheral neurons.
the brain tablets showed that the number of PV neurons in winter animals decreased compared to summer, which provided anatomic data support for the research.
neurons' response to tactile signals can be divided into three categories: activated, suppressed, or unresponsive.
through a double photon calcium imaging experiment in the body, the researchers repeatedly thinked the beards of small skunks, recorded calcium signals from cortical neurons, and quantified the neurons' response to tactile stimuli.
By comparing experiments in autumn and winter with spring and summer, the study found that more neurons were activated by tactile signals in winter, consistent with the increase in anatomical data PV neurons in spring and summer, and that neurons in the fourth tier were 2.3 times more inhibited by tactile stimuli than in autumn and winter.
studies have shown that theskin is thinner in winter than in summer and has fewer inhibitory neurons, making them more susceptible to tactile stimulation.
in 2012, the study foundskunk was a "foodie."
when there is plenty of food, they prefer to hunt juicy crickets and worms rather than earthenites with heavy outer armor.
, however, when food is scarce,can also retreat to second place, hunting the earth to feed the hunger.
in the winter food shortage, reduce the threshold of the body cortical layer to detect haptic signals, can make the small smellnot "pick on food", improve its survival chances.
therefore, reducing the volume of the cortical layer in winter not only saves energy consumption, but also is a neuro-adaptation mechanism to deal with harsh environment, which provides a new perspective for understanding the adaptive mechanism of the nervous system to meet the challenges of the ecological environment.
the seasonal nervous system due to long time span, sampling difficulties, long experimental cycle, related studies are rare.
the study, which tracked individual individuals over a long period of time and recorded groups of animals across years, revealed natural changes in the animal's cortical cortical layer in both winter and summer at different levels of cellular, physiological and largely anatomical levels.
this long-term change in nervous system adaptability, can be considered as a form of neuroplasticity.
is different from the short-term changes in learning memory, the molecular mechanism of seasonal neuroplasticity needs to be further studied.
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