Cell Rep: neurons cooperate to regulate body movement

January 30, 2020 / biourn / -- recently, researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden revealed how various nerve cells in the striatum cooperate to process information, so as to ensure that we plan and implement activities at the right time and with the right energy The results were published in the journal Cell reports Many of our actions are influenced by the environment For example, when playing on the piano, we will adjust the movement of the fingers according to the sound we hear and the sensory feedback of the keys In this regard, the researchers deepen our understanding of how it works by studying the neural network of the striatum, which is responsible for sensory feedback signals When playing the piano, the sensory feedback signal of the fingertip will be processed in the brain area of the cerebral cortex which is responsible for touch Based on the information transmitted by these input signals, the striatum can generate an accurate output signal, which is sent back to the muscle and allows us to press the next key correctly "Although we have known for a long time that striatum is composed of different types of nerve cells, it is still unclear how striatal cells can achieve this complex function To solve this problem, we explored the information types processed by different types of neurons in the striatum cell population." The researchers used photogenetics and other techniques to analyze whether five important cell types in the striatum are involved in communication between the motor cortex, somatosensory cortex and thalamus In mice, spinous neurons in the striatum respond strongly to tactile signal inputs The other kind of striatal neurons, low threshold spiking neurons, hardly respond to the input of sensory signals, but respond strongly to the input of motor cortex signals The researchers also found that different types of neurons respond to different receptors Because some receptors open faster than others, the response of neurons to different types of signals is different These findings provide a new way for striatum to systematically deal with the external information it receives "Our work shows that when external signals enter the striatum network, they are very orderly, and there will be specific signal preferences for different striatum neurons." Source of information: new knowledge on how different brain cell types contribute to our movements source: Yvonne Johansson, Gilad Silberberg The functional organization of continental and thalamic inputs onto five types of structural neurons is determined by source and target cell identities Cell reports, 2020; 30 (4): 1178 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.12.095