Early motor activity drives spindle bursts in the developing somatosensory cortex
Nature. 2004-12-01; 432(7018): 758-761
DOI: 10.1038/nature03132
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1. Nature. 2004 Dec 9;432(7018):758-61.
Early motor activity drives spindle bursts in the developing somatosensory
cortex.
Khazipov R(1), Sirota A, Leinekugel X, Holmes GL, Ben-Ari Y, Buzsáki G.
Author information:
(1)INMED, INSERM U29, Avenue de Luminy, B.P. 13, 13273 Marseille, France.
Sensorimotor coordination emerges early in development. The maturation period is
characterized by the establishment of somatotopic cortical maps, the emergence of
long-range cortical connections, heightened experience-dependent plasticity and
spontaneous uncoordinated skeletal movement. How these various processes
cooperate to allow the somatosensory system to form a three-dimensional
representation of the body is not known. In the visual system, interactions
between spontaneous network patterns and afferent activity have been suggested to
be vital for normal development. Although several intrinsic cortical patterns of
correlated neuronal activity have been described in developing somatosensory
cortex in vitro, the in vivo patterns in the critical developmental period and
the influence of physiological sensory inputs on these patterns remain unknown.
We report here that in the intact somatosensory cortex of the newborn rat in
vivo, spatially confined spindle bursts represent the first and only organized
network pattern. The localized spindles are selectively triggered in a
somatotopic manner by spontaneous muscle twitches, motor patterns analogous to
human fetal movements. We suggest that the interaction between movement-triggered
sensory feedback signals and self-organized spindle oscillations shapes the
formation of cortical connections required for sensorimotor coordination.
DOI: 10.1038/nature03132
PMID: 15592414 [Indexed for MEDLINE]