PUBLICATION
Direct activation of the Mauthner cell by electric field pulses drives ultra-rapid escape responses
- Authors
- Tabor, K.M., Bergeron, S.A., Horstick, E.J., Jordan, D.C., Aho, V., Porkka-Heiskanen, T., Haspel, G., Burgess, H.A.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-140523-7
- Date
- 2014
- Source
- Journal of neurophysiology 112(4): 834-44 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Bergeron, Sadie, Burgess, Harold, Horstick, Eric
- Keywords
- Mauthner, SCN5a, electric, escape, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Action Potentials*
- Animals
- Calcium/metabolism
- Characidae
- Cyprinidae
- Electric Stimulation
- NAV1.5 Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel/genetics
- NAV1.5 Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel/metabolism
- Neurons/metabolism
- Neurons/physiology*
- Oryzias
- Reaction Time*
- Rhombencephalon/cytology
- Rhombencephalon/physiology
- Sodium Channel Blockers/pharmacology
- Swimming*
- Synaptic Transmission
- Tetrodotoxin/pharmacology
- Zebrafish
- PubMed
- 24848468 Full text @ J. Neurophysiol.
Citation
Tabor, K.M., Bergeron, S.A., Horstick, E.J., Jordan, D.C., Aho, V., Porkka-Heiskanen, T., Haspel, G., Burgess, H.A. (2014) Direct activation of the Mauthner cell by electric field pulses drives ultra-rapid escape responses. Journal of neurophysiology. 112(4):834-44.
Abstract
Rapid escape swims in fish are initiated by the Mauthner cells, giant reticulospinal neurons with unique specializations for swift responses. The Mauthner cells directly activate motoneurons and facilitate predator detection by integrating acoustic, mechanosensory and visual stimuli. In addition, larval fish show well-coordinated escape responses when exposed to electric field pulses (EFPs). Sensitization of the Mauthner cell by genetic overexpression of the voltage-gated sodium channel SCN5 increased EFP responsiveness, whereas Mauthner ablation using an engineered variant of nitroreductase with increased activity (epNTR), eliminated the response. The reaction time to EFPs is extremely short, with many responses initiated within 2 ms of the EFP. Large neurons, such as Mauthner cells, show heightened sensitivity to extracellular voltage gradients. We therefore tested if the rapid response to EFPs was due to direct activation of the Mauthner cells, bypassing delays imposed by stimulus detection and transmission by sensory cells. Consistent with this, calcium imaging indicated that EFPs robustly activated the Mauthner cell, but only rarely fired other reticulospinal neurons. Further supporting this idea, pharmacological blockade of synaptic transmission in zebrafish did not affect Mauthner cell activity in response to EFPs. Moreover, Mauthner cells transgenically expressing a tetrodotoxin (TTX) resistant voltage-gated sodium channel retained responses to EFPs despite TTX suppression of action potentials in the rest of the brain. We propose that EFPs directly activate Mauthner cells due to their large size, thereby driving ultra-rapid escape responses in fish.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping