Abstract:
Environmental signals act as input and are processed across successive stages in the brain to generate a meaningful behavioral output. However, a ubiquitous observation is that descending feedback projections from more central to more peripheral brain areas vastly outnumber ascending feedforward projections. Such projections generally act to modify how sensory neurons respond to afferent signals. Recent studies in the electrosensory system of weakly electric fish have revealed novel functions for feedback pathways in that their transformation of the afferent input generates neural firing rate responses to sensory signals mediating perception and behavior. In this review, we focus on summarizing these novel and recently uncovered functions and put them into context by describing the more \"classical\" functions of feedback in the electrosensory system. We further highlight the parallels between the electrosensory system and other systems as well as outline interesting future directions.
摘要:
环境信号作为输入,并在大脑中的连续阶段进行处理,以产生有意义的行为输出。然而,一个普遍的观察是,从更多的大脑中心区域到更多的外周区域的下降反馈投影大大超过了上升的前馈投影。这种投射通常用于改变感觉神经元对传入信号的反应。最近对弱电鱼的电感应系统的研究揭示了反馈途径的新功能,因为它们对传入输入的转换会产生对感觉信号的神经激发率响应,从而介导感知和行为。在这次审查中,我们专注于总结这些新颖的和最近发现的功能,并通过描述电感应系统中更“经典”的反馈功能来将它们置于上下文中。我们进一步强调了电感应系统与其他系统之间的相似之处,并概述了有趣的未来方向。