美国哥伦比亚大学Ashok Litwin-Kumar课题组探究了通往小脑样结构的最佳路径。2023年8月21日出版的《自然—神经科学》发表了这项成果。
他们发展了一种小脑样结构及其传入通路的理论，该理论预测了脑桥传递到小脑和昆虫触角叶肾小球组织的作用。他们强调了集群和分布式神经元表征之间的新的计算区别，这反映在这两种大脑结构的解剖中。他们的理论也调和了最近观测到的相关小脑颗粒细胞(GrC)活动与非线性混合理论。更一般地说，这表明结构化压缩后随机展开是一种灵活计算的有效体系结构。
据了解，从苔藓纤维到GrC的巨大扩张产生了一种神经表征，支持包括联想和内部模型学习在内的功能。其他类似小脑的结构也有这种特征，并启发了许多理论模型。很少有人注意到GrC层的突触前结构，其结构可以被描述为“瓶颈”，其功能尚不清楚。
附：英文原文
Title: Optimal routing to cerebellum-like structures
Author: Muscinelli, Samuel P., Wagner, Mark J., Litwin-Kumar, Ashok
Issue&Volume: 2023-08-21
Abstract: The vast expansion from mossy fibers to cerebellar granule cells (GrC) produces a neural representation that supports functions including associative and internal model learning. This motif is shared by other cerebellum-like structures and has inspired numerous theoretical models. Less attention has been paid to structures immediately presynaptic to GrC layers, whose architecture can be described as a ‘bottleneck’ and whose function is not understood. We therefore develop a theory of cerebellum-like structures in conjunction with their afferent pathways that predicts the role of the pontine relay to cerebellum and the glomerular organization of the insect antennal lobe. We highlight a new computational distinction between clustered and distributed neuronal representations that is reflected in the anatomy of these two brain structures. Our theory also reconciles recent observations of correlated GrC activity with theories of nonlinear mixing. More generally, it shows that structured compression followed by random expansion is an efficient architecture for flexible computation.
DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01403-7
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01403-7
Nature Neuroscience：《自然—神经科学》，创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：28.771
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接：https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex
本期文章：《自然—神经科学》：Online/在线发表
