Khoury, Christine
(2022)
Generalization and Specialization of Inhibitory Subnetworks in Sensory and Association Cortex.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Cortex is structured hierarchically: information from the senses enters in regions specialized for its specific modality, e.g., audition, and is subsequently processed and refined by downstream areas. Association areas integrate inputs from across cortex to inform behavioral outputs. The properties of cortical networks are the result of interactions among diverse populations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, which display common connectivity motifs throughout the entirety of cortex. Three subtypes of interneurons account for most cortical inhibition: parvalbumin-positive (PV), somatostatin-positive (SOM), and vasoactive intestinal polypeptide-positive (VIP) inhibitory interneurons. Though many aspects of these populations’ circuitry are conserved across all of cortex, even subtle differences may determine the activity dynamics and coding properties within regions that allow them to perform their unique functions. We compared auditory cortex (AC), a sensory area dedicated to processing acoustic information, and in posterior parietal cortex (PPC), an association area, which integrates inputs from multiple sensory modalities to shape motor behavior. We compared how SOM inhibitory interneurons responded to spontaneous changes in arousal in AC and PPC. We found that arousal had drastically different effects on SOM subnetworks in AC and PPC, and differentially modulated sensory coding in the two regions. Additionally, we compared the spatiotemporal structure of activity in excitatory and inhibitory subnetworks in AC and PPC. We discovered that, although activity is generally less correlated in AC relative to PPC, SOM subnetworks are relatively highly correlated in both regions, even when discounting the influence of behavioral and sensory variables. However, we found that the spatial scale of SOM subnetworks was substantially broader in PPC relative to AC, and that this extended across all cell-type interactions, including SOM subnetworks. Lastly, we compared SOM and PV subnetworks in PPC, and found that the arousal modulation and the spatial scale of PV subnetworks in PPC was consistent with what was observed in SOM. Our results imply both generalization and specialization in the functional structure of inhibitory networks in sensory and association cortex.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
13 August 2022 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
24 May 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
18 December 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
16 June 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
175 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Neuroscience |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Neuroscience, inhibition, somatostatin, arousal, noise correlations, coupling |
| Date Deposited: |
18 Dec 2024 19:04 |
| Last Modified: |
19 Dec 2024 13:10 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43171 |
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