冷泉港实验室Arkarup Banerjee团队宣布他们开发出歌唱小鼠运动皮质投射的特异性扩张。这一研究成果发表在2026年5月6日出版的国际学术期刊《自然》上。

在这里，该团队研究了Alston歌唱小鼠 (Scotinomys teguina)，它表现出一种在实验室小鼠（Mthem mthemculthem）中没有的惊人的发声行为，以定量确定整个大脑运动皮质投射的物种特异性变化。研究小组对超过76,000个条形码神经元进行了大规模追踪、连续双光子断层扫描和高通量DNA测序，以发现口面运动皮层向听觉皮层区域和中脑导尿管周围灰色区域的特定和大量扩张，这些区域与发声行为有关。

此外，对单个口面运动皮质神经元的投射母题的分析显示，歌唱母题中排他性投射优先扩展到听觉皮质区域。他们的研究结果表明，祖先运动皮层投射的选择性扩张可能在短时间内导致行为分化。

此外，研究结果还促进了大脑皮层对发声控制的机制研究，发声控制是人类语言的关键预适应。这种比较新近分化的物种与大量行为差异的方法可以很容易地推广到其他模型分支，以发现神经回路进化的定量规则。

研究人员表示，阐明神经回路结构的改变如何驱动行为创新仍然是神经科学和进化生物学的一个关键挑战。在哺乳动物中，新皮层被认为在促进快速行为创新方面起着至关重要的作用。尽管远程连接的变化被认为是这些创新的基础，但这些假设在很大程度上仍未经定量测试，部分原因是缺乏跨物种的单神经元分辨率的高通量神经元投影数据。

附：英文原文

Title: Specific expansion of motor cortical projections in a singing mouse

Author: Isko, Emily C., Harpole, Clifford E., Zheng, Xiaoyue Mike, Zhan, Huiqing, Davis, Martin B., Zador, Anthony M., Banerjee, Arkarup

Issue&Volume: 2026-05-06

Abstract: Elucidating how modifications in neural circuit architecture drive behavioural innovation remains a key challenge in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. In mammals, the neocortex is posited to play a crucial part in facilitating rapid behavioural innovations1,2,3. Although changes in long-range connectivity have been proposed to underlie such innovations4,5, these hypotheses remain largely untested quantitatively, which is partly due to the lack of high-throughput neuronal projection data at single-neuron resolution across species. Here we studied the Alston’s singing mouse (Scotinomys teguina), which exhibits a striking vocal behaviour absent in the laboratory mouse (Mus musculus), to quantitatively determine species-specific changes in motor cortical projections throughout the brain. We used bulk tracing, serial two-photon tomography and high-throughput DNA sequencing of more than 76,000 barcoded neurons to discover a specific and substantial expansion of orofacial motor cortical projections to an auditory cortical region and the midbrain periaqueductal grey, regions that are implicated in vocal behaviours6,7,8,9. Moreover, analyses of projection motifs of individual orofacial motor cortical neurons revealed preferential expansion of exclusive projections to the auditory cortical region in the singing mouse. Our results suggest that selective expansion of ancestral motor cortical projections may lead to behavioural divergence over short timescales. Furthermore, the results facilitate mechanistic investigations of enhanced cortical control over vocalizations—a crucial preadaptation for human language10,11. This approach of comparing recently diverged species with substantial behavioural divergences can be readily generalized across other model clades to discover quantitative rules of neural circuit evolution.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10458-y

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10458-y