Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter I
Corticofugal Modulation of
Tactile Responses of Neurons in
the Spinal Trigeminal Nucleus:
A Wavelet Coherence Study
Eduardo Malmierca
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Nazareth P. Castellanos
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Valeri A. Makarov
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Angel Nuñez
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
AbSTRACT
It is well know the temporal structure of spike discharges is crucial to elicit different types of neuronal
plasticity. Also, precise and reproducible spike timing is one of the alternatives of the sensory stimu-
lus encoding. This chapter studies a new mathematical analysis of the temporal structure of neuronal
responses during tactile stimulation of the spinal trigeminal nucleus. We have applied the coherence
analysis and the wavelet based approach for quantification of the functional stimulus - neural response
coupling. We apply this mathematical tool to analyze the decrease of tactile responses of trigeminal
neurons during the simultaneous application of a novel tactile stimulation outside of the neuronal re-
ceptive field (sensory-interference). These data suggest the existence of an attentional filter at this early
stage of sensory processing.
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