Mapping Monkey Secondary Somatosensory Cortex Circuits
Pai-Feng Yang, Jamie Reed, Zhangyan Yang, Feng Wang, Ning Zheng et al.
(see article e2375242025)
Combining optogenetics with fMRI is a powerful experimental approach that makes it possible to create brain-wide activation maps caused by the artificial activation of a distinct brain region. Yang and colleagues used this approach to probe brain-wide activity caused by optogenetic activation of excitatory neurons in the secondary somatosensory cortex of nonhuman primates. The authors discovered that anatomical connections of the secondary somatosensory cortex were strongly linked to fMRI BOLD activity that resulted from optogenetic activation. Their findings also revealed that local field potentials at the excitatory neuron population level are a more accurate representation of optogenetically driven fMRI signals than neural spiking activity. According to the authors, this is the first combined use of optogenetics and fMRI to establish a brain-wide map following secondary somatosensory cortex excitatory neuron stimulation. The authors emphasize this work supports the idea that this cortical region is critical for connecting sensory areas to cortical and subcortical areas that drive cognition and emotion. This study also has the potential to inform future work on targeted artificial stimulation therapies to influence neuromodulation in neurological and psychiatric disease states.
The approach used in this image helped reveal the spatial alignment between optogenetically evoked activation maps and the anatomical connections of an mCherry tracer virus injected into the secondary somatosensory cortex. Cortical and subcortical regions were annotated on corresponding brain slices from a squirrel monkey atlas. See Yang et al. for more information.
Exploring Social Coordination during Dance
Félix Bigand, Roberta Bianco, Sara Fernández Abalde, Trinh Nguyen, and Giacomo Novembre
(see article e2372242025)
Dancing fluidly with other people involves aligning movements with others while processing dynamic sensory information, like sounds and visuals. This is referred to as social coordination. Bigand et al. explored how the brain supports social coordination during dance in this issue. The authors recorded the brain activity, whole-body movements, and muscle activity of pairs of inexperienced dancers as they danced to the same or different songs. They also manipulated whether dancers could or could not see each other. Their new joint EEG and motion capture approach unveiled distinct neural signatures for music processing, self-generated movements, movements generated by following a partner, and social coordination. Neural signals for social coordination that enabled synchronized movements between people occurred only when dancers were moving to the same song and could see each other. Notably, out of 15 observed dance moves, the brain was most sensitive to bouncing, or flexing of the knees, during social coordination. Because Bigand et al. also observed that bouncing is a weaker movement than most of the other dance moves they measured, this may suggest that bouncing has a unique role in social coordination. According to the authors, this work sheds light on how the brain supports socially engaging activities while integrating dynamic sensory information.
Footnotes
This Week in The Journal was written by Paige McKeon
