Barrel cortex VIP/ChAT interneurons suppress sensory responses in vivo
Fig 5
VChIs inhibit the sensory response elicited by whisker deflection.
(A) Illustration of the experimental system: cell-attached recordings are performed from putative excitatory cells in an awake, head-fixed mouse. In each trial, a piezoelectric deflection in a random amplitude (0.2, 0.6, 1.0, or 1.4 mm) is delivered to the whiskers, and optogenetic stimulation is either delivered (“On” trial) or not (“Off” trial). (B) Example of the response of a single cell to the 4 whisker deflection amplitudes in the Off and in the On trials. (C) Population average of the response of all cells to the whisker deflections in the Off and On trials. Inset: example of the sigmoidal response of a cell in which the whiskers were deflected in 19 different amplitudes. (D) The average evoked rate for each cell in the intermediate range of the sigmoidal curve. (E) Evoked rate in the Off and On trials in LW and HW trials. (F) The response of a cell to whisker deflection, sorted by the lag to the first deflection-evoked spike (grey horizontal bar: piezoelectric stimulation). (G) The latency to the first evoked spike in the On and in the Off trials across the population. ChAT, choline acetyltransferase; HW, high whisking; LW, low whisking; sp/s, spikes per second; VChI, VIP/ChAT interneuron; VIP, vasoactive intestinal polypeptide.