Thalamocortical control of cell-type specificity drives circuits for processing whisker-related information in mouse barrel cortex.

ABSTRACT: Excitatory spiny stellate neurons are prominently featured in the cortical circuits of sensory modalities that provide high salience and high acuity representations of the environment. These specialized neurons are considered developmentally linked to bottom-up inputs from the thalamus, however, the molecular mechanisms underlying their diversification and function are unknown. Here, we investigated this in mouse somatosensory cortex, where spiny stellate neurons and pyramidal neurons have distinct roles in processing whisker-evoked signals. Utilizing spatial transcriptomics, we identified reciprocal patterns of gene expression which correlated with these cell-types and were linked to innervation by specific thalamic inputs during development. Genetic manipulation that prevents the acquisi

SUBMITTER: Young TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10539368 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature