Thalamic input to auditory cortex is locally heterogeneous but globally tonotopic

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Abstract

Topographic representation of the receptor surface is a fundamental feature of sensory cortical organization. This is imparted by the thalamus, which relays information from the periphery to the cortex. To better understand the rules governing thalamocortical connectivity and the origin of cortical maps, we used in vivo two-photon calcium imaging to characterize the properties of thalamic axons innervating different layers of mouse auditory cortex. Although tonotopically organized at a global level, we found that the frequency selectivity of individual thalamocortical axons is surprisingly heterogeneous, even in layers 3b/4 of the primary cortical areas, where the thalamic input is dominated by the lemniscal projection. We also show that thalamocortical input to layer 1 includes collaterals from axons innervating layers 3b/4 and is largely in register with the main input targeting those layers. Such locally varied thalamocortical projections may be useful in enabling rapid contextual modulation of cortical frequency representations.

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Sebastian A Vasquez-Lopez

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4899-1221
Yves Weissenberger

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Michael Lohse

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Peter Keating

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0670-9075
Andrew J King

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
Andrew J King, Senior Editor, eLife.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5180-7179
Johannes C Dahmen

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

For correspondence
johannes.dahmen@dpag.ox.ac.uk

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9889-8303

Funding

Wellcome (WT07650AIA WT108369/Z/2015/Z)

Andrew J King

Wellcome (WT102372)

Yves Weissenberger

Clarendon Scholarship, University of Oxford

Sebastian A Vasquez-Lopez

Wellcome (WT105241/Z/14/Z)

Michael Lohse

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

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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.