Publications by Georgios Foustoukos

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

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

Anatomical and functional characterization of neocortical circuits involved in transforming whisker sensory processing into goal-directed licking

Georgios Foustoukos

The choice of an action upon perception of an external stimulus, arriving at a sensory organ of an animal, depends on previous experiences and outcomes throughout its life. In the rodent brain, the underlying mechanisms involved in simple sensorimotor tran ...

EPFL2022

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

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

Cortical circuits for transforming whisker sensation into goal-directed licking

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Georgios Foustoukos, Vahid Esmaeili, Keita Tamura, Anastasiia Oryshchuk

Animals can learn to use sensory stimuli to generate motor actions in order to obtain rewards. However, the precise neuronal circuits driving learning and execution of a specific goal-directed sensory-to-motor transformation remain to be elucidated. Here, ...

2020

Distinct Contributions of Whisker Sensory Cortex and Tongue-Jaw Motor Cortex in a Goal-Directed Sensorimotor Transformation

Sami El-Boustani, Carl Petersen, Matthieu Pierre Auffret, Johannes Maria Mayrhofer, Georgios Foustoukos, Keita Tamura

The neural circuits underlying goal-directed sensorimotor transformations in the mammalian brain are incompletely understood. Here, we compared the role of primary tongue-jaw motor cortex (tjM1) and primary whisker sensory cortex (wS1) in head-restrained m ...

2019