Modulation of Thalamic Somatosensory Neurons by Arousal and Attention

摘要

Several directions have been pursued toward the achievement of our research goals. We have continued to record the somatosensory responses in trained and untrained monkeys, looking for modulation related to both the state of arousal and to various aspects of the attention paradigm. Experiments have been conducted toward developing the techniques required to determine corticothalamic mechanisms are responsible for this modulation. Some of the results reported here concerning the effects of arousal state on thalamic somatosensory processing are currently in press. The stereotaxic atlas developed for this study has been further enhanced to include a horizontal view of thalamic structures. HISTAT, the statistical program for intra- and inter- histogram analysis has been upgraded to include additional statistical comparisons. (AW)