Faithful representation of tactile intensity under different contexts emerges from the distinct adaptive properties of the first somatosensory relay stations

Adaptation allows neurons to respond to a wide range of stimulus intensities. However, it also leads to ambiguity as the representation of the external world depends on the context. We recorded neurons from Wistar rats' brainstem nuclei belonging to two major somatosensory pathways (lemniscal and paralemniscal) and explored the way in which they encode noisy stimuli under different contexts. We found that although their unadapted intensity-response curves are very similar, the adapted curves of the two pathways are distinctively different as they are optimized for encoding different intensity ranges. Lemniscal neurons most faithfully encoded stimuli when the background intensity was high, whereas paralemniscal cells best encoded stimuli under low intensity context. Intracellular recordings indicate that these differences emerge already at the synaptic level. We suggest that the two pathways synergistically improve the ability of this system to encode a wide range of intensities during natural stimulation, potentially reducing the inherent ambiguity of adaptive coding.