听力和耳聋小鼠听觉皮层神经解剖连接的全脑图谱绘制

文献信息

中文摘要

背景： 显著的治疗创新使得先天性耳聋患者建立听力成为可能。尽管取得了这些进展，恢复听觉功能的一个潜在障碍是，缺乏听觉经验会改变听觉皮层的连接，而听觉皮层是参与听觉感知和认知的区域。方法：我们使用交叉遗传学方法绘制了先天性耳聋小鼠及其听力正常同窝仔鼠初级听觉皮层的全脑输入图谱。结果：我们发现，耳聋小鼠来自基底内侧杏仁核、内侧膝状体核核心以及前听觉丘脑核团的传入显著减少。尽管如此，听觉皮层连接的主要方面，包括来自其他丘脑核团和皮层非听觉区域的输入，并未受到耳聋的影响。结论：这些发现强调了在缺乏听觉经验的情况下听觉皮层连接的变化和保留，这可能为旨在为先天性耳聋患者建立听力的疗法提供信息。

英文摘要

Remarkable therapeutic innovations have made it possible to establish hearing in congenitally deaf subjects. Despite these advances, a potential obstacle to restoring auditory function is that the absence of auditory experience alters the connectivity of the auditory cortex, a region that contributes to auditory perception and cognition. Here we used an intersectional genetic approach to map the brainwide inputs to the primary auditory cortex of congenitally deaf mice and their hearing littermates. We found that deaf mice displayed a significant reduction in afferents arising from the basomedial amygdala, the core of the medial geniculate nucleus, and anterior auditory thalamic nuclei. Nonetheless, major aspects of auditory cortical connectivity, including input from other thalamic nuclei and from non-auditory regions of the cortex, were unaffected by deafness. These findings highlight altered and preserved connectivity of the auditory cortex in the absence of auditory experience, which may inform therapies designed to establish hearing in congenitally deaf subjects.