{"486871":{"#nid":"486871","#data":{"type":"news","title":"\u201cBursting\u201d Cells Gain the Brain\u2019s Attention for Life-or-Death Decisions","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAs you start across the street, out of the corner of your eye, you spot something moving toward you. Instantly, your brain shifts its focus to assess the potential threat, which you quickly determine to be a slow-moving bicycle \u2013 not a car \u2013 which will pass behind you as you complete your crossing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe brain\u2019s ability to quickly focus on life-or-death, yes-or-no decisions, then immediately shift to detailed analytical processing, is believed to be the work of the thalamus, a small section of the midbrain through which most sensory inputs from the body flow. When cells in the thalamus detect something that requires urgent attention from the rest of the brain, they begin \u201cbursting\u201d \u2013 many cells firing off simultaneous signals to get the attention of the cortex. Once the threat passes, the cells quickly switch back to quieter activity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUsing optogenetics and other technology, researchers have for the first time precisely manipulated this bursting activity of the thalamus, tying it to the sense of touch. The work, done in animal models, was reported January 14th in the journal \u003Cem\u003ECell Reports\u003C\/em\u003E. The research is supported by the National Institutes of Health\u2019s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf you clap your hands once, that\u2019s loud,\u201d explained \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.bme.gatech.edu\/bme\/faculty\/Garrett-B.-Stanley\u0022\u003EGarrett Stanley\u003C\/a\u003E, a professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.bme.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EWallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering\u003C\/a\u003E at Georgia Tech and Emory University. \u201cBut if you clap your hands several times in a row, that\u2019s louder. And if you and your friends all clap together and at the same time, that\u2019s even stronger. That is what these cells do, and the idea is that this mechanism produces bursts synchronized across many cells to send out a very strong signal about a stimulus in the outside world.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENeuroscientists have long believed that such coordinated spikes of activity serve to focus the brain\u2019s attention on issues requiring immediate attention. Stanley and graduate student Clarissa Whitmire \u2013 working with researchers Cornelius Schwarz and Christian Waiblinger from the University of T\u00fcbingen in Germany \u2013 used optogenetics techniques to study bursting activity in the thalamus of rats. Their findings could lead to a better understanding of how cells in this walnut-sized portion of the human brain perform a variety of sensory and motor control tasks, switching from one mode to another as needed.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cClarissa was able to get into the mechanism of synchronized thalamic bursting so we can manipulate it and look at it not only from within individual cells, but also across cells, recording from multiple cells simultaneously,\u201d said Stanley, who has been studying the thalamus for more than a decade. \u201cWe can now begin to provide a coherent story about how information gets from the outside world to the brain machinery that\u2019s in the cortex.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers studied the connection between the rats\u2019 whiskers and cells in their thalamus. By stimulating the whiskers in many different ways, they were able to induce signals \u2013 including bursting \u2013 in the thalamus. The researchers used light-sensitive proteins introduced into the thalamic cells \u2013 a technology known as optogenetics \u2013 to establish optical control of the bursting activity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe were able to turn the bursting mechanism on or off at will,\u201d explained Stanley, who is the Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Professor in the Coulter Department. \u201cThis is really the first time we have been able to readily control this, turning the knob in one direction to eliminate the bursting activity and then turning it the other way to make the cells produce these bursts in rapid succession.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe control extended not just to turning the bursting on or off, but also allowed the researchers to create a continuum of cell activity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cClarissa could make them act very \u2018bursty\u2019 and very synchronized, or she could turn the knob and move them very smoothly to the opposite end of the spectrum,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cThere is a range of activity that people had speculated would be there, but nobody had actually done the experiments to show it existed.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe cellular bursting mechanism likely developed very early in mammalian evolution to help creatures survive threats posed by predators. The brain\u2019s cortex is always busy with higher-level activity, and the thalamic bursting serves to let it know that critical outside activities need its urgent attention.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOther sensory inputs such as vision can initiate bursting, but Stanley\u2019s group chose to study sense of touch in this work. In rats, the whiskers are embedded in follicles that have specialized cells whose function is similar to that of human sensory cells. Thus, these whiskers serve many of the same \u201ctouch\u201d functions as human fingers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen you reach out with your hand and touch a surface, you are mechanically deforming the skin, stretching the sensors that are in the skin and sending signals to tell the brain about the surface you are touching,\u201d Stanley noted. \u201cIn the rats, we moved the whiskers, recorded the activity, and identified the presence of a burst.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs a next step, Stanley and his research team plan to connect what they\u2019ve learned about bursting activity of the thalamus to behavior in an effort to fully confirm the theory. \u201cThe next step is to take this to behavior and work with animals that are trained to detect and discriminate between different kinds of inputs,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWith the optogenetics and other advanced technology, researchers are beginning to see the big picture of how sensory inputs affect brain activity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThese thalamic cells are somewhere in between the outside world and the cognitive machinery of the brain, and they have a job that changes rapidly,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cIn some cases, they are saying \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019 about something in the outside world, and in some cases they are discriminating between the final details of objects in the outside world.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis work was supported by US-German Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience grant (US: NSF CRCNS IOS-1131948; German: BMBF CRCNS 01GQ1113) and NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke grants R01NS048285 and R01NS085447. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECITATION\u003C\/strong\u003E: Clarissa Whitmire, Christian Waiblinger, Cornelius Schwarz, Garrett Stanley, \u201cInformation Coding Through Adaptive Gating of Synchronized Thalamic Bursting, (Cell Reports, 2016).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EResearch News\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E177 North Avenue\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAtlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMedia Relations Contact\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon (404-894-6986) (\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWriter\u003C\/strong\u003E: John Toon\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EUsing optogenetics and other technology, researchers have for the first time precisely manipulated the bursting activity of cells in the thalamus, tying this alerting activity to the sense of touch.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Researchers have for the first time precisely manipulated the bursting activity of cells in the thalamus."}],"uid":"27303","created_gmt":"2016-01-14 20:52:20","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:20:24","author":"John Toon","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-01-14T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2016-01-14T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"486851":{"id":"486851","type":"image","title":"Studying bursting brain cells","body":null,"created":"1452902401","gmt_created":"2016-01-16 00:00:01","changed":"1475895242","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:02","alt":"Studying bursting brain cells","file":{"fid":"204341","name":"bursting-behavior4.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bursting-behavior4_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bursting-behavior4_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2078244,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/bursting-behavior4_0.jpg?itok=y1JKYwuZ"}},"486861":{"id":"486861","type":"image","title":"Studying bursting brain cells2","body":null,"created":"1452902401","gmt_created":"2016-01-16 00:00:01","changed":"1475895242","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:02","alt":"Studying bursting brain cells2","file":{"fid":"204342","name":"bursting-behavior3.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bursting-behavior3_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bursting-behavior3_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1930242,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/bursting-behavior3_0.jpg?itok=Dv8bPC45"}}},"media_ids":["486851","486861"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1912","name":"brain"},{"id":"171581","name":"cell bursting"},{"id":"14462","name":"Garrett Stanley"},{"id":"11635","name":"optogenetics"},{"id":"11327","name":"Thalamus"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71891","name":"Health and Medicine"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Toon\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearch News\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jtoon@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejtoon@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E(404) 894-6986\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jtoon@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}