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Auditory response of the reticular nucleus of thalamus in awake mice

LI Yu-Hua, SONG Chang-Bao, LIANG Fei-Xue^*

College of Biomedical Engineering, South Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China

Abstract

This study aims to explore the auditory response characteristics of the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) in awake mice during auditory information processing, so as to deepen the understanding of TRN and explore its role in the auditory system. By in vivo electrophysiological single cell attached recording of TRN neurons in 18 SPF C57BL/6J mice, we observed the responses of 314 recorded neurons to two kinds of auditory stimuli, noise and tone, applied to mice. The results showed that TRN received projections from layer six of the primary auditory cortex (A1). Among 314 TRN neurons, 56.05% responded silently, 21.02% responded only to noise and 22.93% responded to both noise and tone. The neurons with noise response can be divided into three patterns according to their response time: onset, sustain and long-lasting, accounting for 73.19%, 14.49% and 12.32%, respectively. The response threshold of the sustain pattern neurons was lower than those of the other two types. Under noise stimulation, compared with A1 layer six, TRN neurons showed unstable auditory response (P < 0.001), higher spontaneous firing rate (P < 0.001), and longer response latency (P < 0.001). Under tone stimulation, TRN’s response continuity was poor, and the frequency tuning was greatly different from that of A1 layer six (P < 0.001), but their sensitivity to tone was similar (P > 0.05), and TRN’s tone response threshold was much higher than that of A1 layer six (P < 0.001). The above results demonstrate that TRN mainly undertakes the task of information transmission in the auditory system. The noise response of TRN is more extensive than the tone response. Generally, TRN prefers high-intensity acoustic stimulation.

Key words: Mice; thalamic reticular nucleus; auditory sensation; in vivo electrophysiology

Received: 　　Accepted:

Corresponding author: 梁妃学　　E-mail: lfx_2@hotmail.com

Citing This Article：

LI Yu-Hua, SONG Chang-Bao, LIANG Fei-Xue. Auditory response of the reticular nucleus of thalamus in awake mice. Acta Physiol Sin 2023; 75 (3): 360-368 (in Chinese with English abstract).