Publications by Carl Petersen | EPFL Graph Search

Cell-class-specific orofacial motor maps in mouse neocortex

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Keita Tamura, Pol Bech Vilaseca

Cortical motor maps represent fundamental organizing principles for voluntary motor control,1 yet their underlying structure remains poorly understood, including regions of sensory2,3 and parietal cortex,4 as well as the classical frontal motor cortex. To ...

2025

Dopamine dynamics in nucleus accumbens across reward-based learning of goal-directed whisker-to-lick sensorimotor transformations in mice

Carl Petersen, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Sylvain Crochet, Jun Huang

The synaptic and neuronal circuit mechanisms underlying reward-based learning remain to be fully determined. In the mammalian brain, dopamine release in nucleus accumbens is thought to contribute importantly to reward signals for learning and promoting syn ...

Elsevier BV2024

Cell class-specific long-range axonal projections of neurons in mouse whisker-related somatosensory cortices

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Keita Tamura, Yanqi Liu, Pol Bech Vilaseca

Long-range axonal projections of diverse classes of neocortical excitatory neurons likely contribute to brain-wide interactions processing sensory, cognitive and motor signals. Here, we performed light-sheet imaging of fluorescently labeled axons from gene ...

2024

Striatal Dopamine Signals and Reward Learning

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Mauro Pulin, Yanqi Liu, Christos Sourmpis, Parviz Ghaderi, Pol Bech Vilaseca, Meriam Malekzadeh, Anthony Pierre Robert Renard, Robin François Virginien Dard

We are constantly bombarded by sensory information and constantly making decisions on how to act. In order to optimally adapt behavior, we must judge which sequences of sensory inputs and actions lead to successful outcomes in specific circumstances. Neuro ...

Oxford Univ Press2023

Membrane potential dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in mouse barrel cortex during active whisker sensing

Carl Petersen, Aurélie Pala, Sylvain Crochet, Taro Kiritani, Célia Roxane Gasselin

Neocortical neurons can increasingly be divided into well-defined classes, but their activity patterns during quantified behavior remain to be fully determined. Here, we obtained membrane potential recordings from various classes of excitatory and inhibito ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2023

Neural mechanisms underlying uninstructed orofacial movements during reward-based learning behaviors

Carl Petersen

During reward-based learning tasks, animals make orofacial movements that globally influence brain activity at the timings of reward expectation and acquisition. These orofacial movements are not explicitly instructed and typically appear along with goal-d ...

2023

Distributed and specific encoding of sensory, motor, and decision information in the mouse neocortex during goal-directed behavior

Wulfram Gerstner, Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Vahid Esmaeili, Anastasiia Oryshchuk, Alireza Modirshanechi, Christos Sourmpis

Goal-directed behaviors involve coordinated activity in many cortical areas, but whether the encoding of task variables is distributed across areas or is more specifically represented in distinct areas remains unclear. Here, we compared representations of ...

Cell Press2023

Emerging principles of spacetime in brains: Meeting report on spatial neurodynamics

Carl Petersen

How do neurons and networks of neurons interact spatially? Here, we overview recent discoveries revealing how spatial dynamics of spiking and postsynaptic activity efficiently expose and explain fundamental brain and brainstem mechanisms behind detection, ...

CELL PRESS2022

Axonal and Dendritic Morphology of Excitatory Neurons in Layer 2/3 Mouse Barrel Cortex Imaged Through Whole-Brain Two-Photon Tomography and Registered to a Digital Brain Atlas

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Georgios Foustoukos, Yanqi Liu

Communication between cortical areas contributes importantly to sensory perception and cognition. On the millisecond time scale, information is signaled from one brain area to another by action potentials propagating across long-range axonal arborizations. ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

Learning-related congruent and incongruent changes of excitation and inhibition in distinct cortical areas

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Romain Guiet, Georgios Foustoukos, Vahid Esmaeili, Keita Tamura, Anastasiia Oryshchuk, Yanqi Liu, Reza Asri

Excitatory and inhibitory neurons in diverse cortical regions are likely to contribute differentially to the transformation of sensory information into goal-directed motor plans. Here, we investigate the relative changes across mouse sensorimotor cortex in ...

2022

Cortical sensory processing across motivational states during goal-directed behavior

Sami El-Boustani, Carl Petersen, Matthieu Pierre Auffret, Johannes Maria Mayrhofer, Georgios Foustoukos, Maëlle Guyoton

Behavioral states can influence performance of goal-directed sensorimotor tasks. Yet, it is unclear how altered neuronal sensory representations in these states relate to task performance and learning. We trained water-restricted mice in a two-whisker disc ...

2022

3D Ultrastructure of Synaptic Inputs to Distinct GABAergic Neurons in the Mouse Primary Visual Cortex

Carl Petersen, Graham Knott, Jérôme Blanc, Catherine Maclachlan

Synapses are the fundamental elements of the brain's complicated neural networks. Although the ultrastructure of synapses has been extensively studied, the difference in how synaptic inputs are organized onto distinct neuronal types is not yet fully unders ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC2021

Cell Type-Specific Membrane Potential Changes in Dorsolateral Striatum Accompanying Reward-Based Sensorimotor Learning

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Tanya C Sippy

The striatum integrates sensorimotor and motivational signals, likely playing a key role in reward-based learning of goal-directed behavior. However, cell type-specific mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning remain to be precisely determined. Here, w ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2021

Cell-type-specific nicotinic input disinhibits mouse barrel cortex during active sensing

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Célia Roxane Gasselin, Benoît Hohl

Fast synaptic transmission relies upon the activation of ionotropic receptors by neurotransmitter release to evoke postsynaptic potentials. Glutamate and GABA play dominant roles in driving highly dynamic activity in synaptically connected neuronal circuit ...

CELL PRESS2021

Neuronal Circuits In Barrel Cortex For Whisker Sensory Perception

Carl Petersen

The array of whiskers on the snout provides rodents with tactile sensory information relating to the size, shape and texture of objects in their immediate environment. Rodents can use their whiskers to detect stimuli, distinguish textures, locate objects a ...

AMER PHYSIOLOGICAL SOC2021

Toward Biophysical Mechanisms of Neocortical Computation after 50 Years of Barrel Cortex Research

Carl Petersen, Graham Knott, Felix Schürmann

2021

Rapid suppression and sustained activation of distinct cortical regions for a delayed sensory-triggered motor response

Wulfram Gerstner, Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Samuel Pavio Muscinelli, Georgios Foustoukos, Vahid Esmaeili, Keita Tamura, Anastasiia Oryshchuk, Marta Boscaglia, Yanqi Liu, Alireza Modirshanechi

The neuronal mechanisms generating a delayed motor response initiated by a sensory cue remain elusive. Here, we tracked the precise sequence of cortical activity in mice transforming a brief whisker stimulus into delayed licking using wide-field calcium im ...

2021

Somatostatin enhances visual processing and perception by suppressing excitatory inputs to parvalbumin-positive interneurons in V1

Carl Petersen, Graham Knott, Catherine Maclachlan, Seung-Hee Lee

Somatostatin (SST) is a neuropeptide expressed in a major subtype of GABAergic interneurons in the cortex. Despite abundant expression of SST and its receptors, their modulatory function in cortical processing remains unclear. Here, we found that SST appli ...

2020

Ultrastructural comparison of dendritic spine morphology preserved with cryo and chemical fixation

Carl Petersen, Graham Knott, Natalya Korogod, Jérôme Blanc

Previously, we showed that cryo fixation of adult mouse brain tissue gave a truer representation of brain ultrastructure in comparison with a standard chemical fixation method (Korogod et al., 2015). Extracellular space matched physiological measurements, ...

2020

Anatomically and functionally distinct thalamocortical inputs to primary and secondary mouse whisker somatosensory cortices

Sami El-Boustani, Carl Petersen, Berat Semihcan Sermet, Georgios Foustoukos

Subdivisions of mouse whisker somatosensory thalamus project to cortex in a region-specific and layer-specific manner. However, a clear anatomical dissection of these pathways and their functional properties during whisker sensation is lacking. Here, we us ...

Nature Publishing Group2020