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Driving brain rhythm makes mice more sensitive to touch

August 24, 2014
Brown University
In a new study researchers show that they could make faint sensations more vivid by triggering a brain rhythm that appears to shift sensory attention. The study in mice provides the first direct evidence that the brain's 'gamma' rhythms have a causal role in processing the sense of touch.

Precise pulses of blue light allowed researchers to generate a 40-hertz gamma rhythm in the sensory neocortex of mice. Mice with that rhythm in their brains could more often detect the fainter vibrations the researchers provided to their whiskers.
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University


The findings offer the first direct evidence that "gamma" brainwaves in the cortex affect perception and attention. With only correlations and associations as evidence before, neuroscientists have argued for years about whether gamma has an important role or whether it's merely a byproduct -- an "exhaust fume" in the words of one -- of such brain activity.



"There were a lot of ways this experiment could have failed but instead to our surprise it was pretty decisive from the very first subject we looked at -- that under certain conditions we can make a super-perceiving mouse," said Christopher Moore, associate professor of neuroscience at Brown and senior author of the study. "We're making a mouse do better than a mouse could have done otherwise."

Specifically, Moore and co-first authors Siegle and Dominique Pritchett performed their experiments by using optogenetics -- a technique of using light to control the firing patterns of neurons -- to generate a gamma rhythm by manipulating inhibitory interneurons in the primary sensory neocortex of mice. That part of the brain controls a mouse's ability to detect faint sensations via its whiskers.






This idea suggested that the timing of the rhythm matters.








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Journal Reference:

  1. Joshua H Siegle, Dominique L Pritchett, Christopher I Moore. Gamma-range synchronization of fast-spiking interneurons can enhance detection of tactile stimuli. Nature Neuroscience, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3797

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Brown University. "Driving brain rhythm makes mice more sensitive to touch." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 August 2014. <>.
Brown University. (2014, August 24). Driving brain rhythm makes mice more sensitive to touch. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from
Brown University. "Driving brain rhythm makes mice more sensitive to touch." ScienceDaily. (accessed February 6, 2016).

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