Simultaneous recordings from pairs of cat somatosensory cortical neurons with overlapping peripheral receptive fields.
Fifty-three cell pairs in the somatosensory cerebral cortex were examined in pentobarbital-anesthetized cats for evidence of short latency interactions. Many neuronal pairs separated by distances of 150 to 500 micron were observed to have temporal dependencies. In a subset of 19 pairs where the surrounding multiunit activity could be classified as rapidly adapting or slowly adapting, short latency interactions existed only between cell pairs sharing the same multiunit background activity. If one member of the pair was in a slowly adapting background and the other in a rapidly adapting background, the cells did not influence one another. This observation was taken as evidence for parallel and separate processing of afferent signals from rapidly and slowly adapting cutaneous mechanoreceptors in cat somatosensory cortex.
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000818:Animals; D002415:Cats; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D013003:Somatosensory Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors