Altered interhemispheric interaction during whisking

Title: Reduction of corpus callosum activity during whisking leads to interhemispheric decorrelation

Journal: Nature Communications (2021) 12:4095

Link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24310-6

Comments:

Left and right brain communicates through thick fiber bundle called corpus callosum. Through this structure, the cortical area encoding similar functions on both sides interact with each other. But, how such interaction are modulated by the brain and behavioral states remains unclear.

The authors recorded electrophysiologically the extracellular spiking activity of neurons in the somatosensory cortex on both sides while the mice exhibited voluntary whisking. Coincident spiking activity of the left and right neurons were more frequently observed at resting state than at whisking, suggesting the decreased interhemispheric correlation during behavior.

They also showed that inactivation of callosal neurons via chemogenetics reduced the coincident firing of the left and right neurons in the somatosensory cortex, implying a role of callosal neurons in interhemispheric correlation.

Since it seems to be under the influence of neuromodulatory system, it is interesting to examine how the interhemispheric interaction are modulated by the neuromodulators such as acetylcholine and monoamines.