Carta’s lab working on synaptic transmission and plasticity in cortical circuits, especially how cortical circuits encode sensory information. The cortex receives and computes information from the external world to guide our behaviour. Where and how thermal stimuli are processed in the cortex was not known. With Mikkel Verstergard, they wanted to understand how non-painful temperatures are encoded at the single cell level in the mammalian cortex. Therefore, we have developed a preparation to optically access the mouse insular cortex. For this purpose, they used large-scale imaging approaches such as wide-field and two-photon calcium imaging in awake behaving mice to record neuronal activity. Finally, in order to confirm the role of the insular cortex in temperature perception, they performed optogenetic manipulations. Thus, this study demonstrated that cooling and warming are coded differently in the mammalian cortex. This highlights the complexity of temperature perception in the brain!
The cellular coding of temperature in the mammalian cortex. Vestergaard M, Carta M, Güney G, Poulet JFA. Nature. 2023-02-08. 614(7949) : 725-731. 10.1038/s41586-023-05705-5
2P Imaging, Optogenetics, Plasticity, Synapse
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