Multisensory integration in the developing tectum is constrained by the balance of excitation and inhibition

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Abstract

Multisensory integration (MSI) is the process that allows the brain to bind together spatiotemporally congruent inputs from different sensory modalities to produce single salient representations. While the phenomenology of MSI in vertebrate brains is well described, relatively little is known about cellular and synaptic mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Here we use an isolated brain preparation to describe cellular mechanisms underlying development of MSI between visual and mechanosensory inputs in the optic tectum of Xenopus tadpoles. We find MSI is highly dependent on the temporal interval between crossmodal stimulus pairs. Over a key developmental period, the temporal window for MSI significantly narrows and is selectively tuned to specific interstimulus intervals. These changes in MSI correlate with developmental increases in evoked synaptic inhibition, and inhibitory blockade reverses observed developmental changes in MSI. We propose a model in which development of recurrent inhibition mediates development of temporal aspects of MSI in the tectum.

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Daniel L Felch

Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Arseny S Khakhalin

Department of Biology, Bard College, New York, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Carlos D Aizenman

Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, United States

For correspondence
Carlos_Aizenman@brown.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: The Brown University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approved all handling of animals in accordance with National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines. Experiments were performed under IACUC protocol #1308000008C002, most recently renewed August 12, 2015.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.