CortexVisionBehavior · Neocortical circuits underlying visually-guided behaviors in mice.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2016-03-17 → 2018-03-16
- EU contribution
- €183,455
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Neocortical circuits underlying visually-guided behaviors in mice.
We aim to understand how different brain regions, specifically within the cerebral cortex, work together to generate productive behavior. Which neurons in which areas of cortex cooperate to give rise to our ability to perceive, to think, and to act? How do they achieve this cooperation? The cerebral cortex is a part of the brain that participates in many core functions of human cognition, from perception to memory to action. Understanding how it underlies our thoughts and behaviors is key to understanding how it is disrupted in disorders of cognition, such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and intellectual disabilities. Our research aims to help achieve this understanding by measuring and manipulating the activity of populations of neurons in the cortex of mice while they perform simple behavioral tasks. We hypothesize that the computations we discover performed by the cortex of a simple mammal like a mouse are some of the same ones that are performed by the cortex even in humans, due to the overwhelming similarity of this structure between the species. Therefore, this research will help, in the long run, to relieve the burden on society of disorders and conditions of the brain.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Many of our most common behaviors, such as reaching out to grasp an object or turning towards something of interest, require that we transform visual information into a representation that guides action. In humans and other mammals, key steps in this transformation take place in the cerebral cortex, by the cooperative action of multiple cortical areas. How does this cooperation occur? The classical hypothesis holds that cortical areas act in series, each performing a unique step of the transformation and passing on the result, like workers on an assembly line. In an alternative hypothesis the transformation occurs in a distributed fashion, with multiple cortical areas participating jointly in each step. In this hypothesis each area may function more like people lifting a table together by its sides. To test these competing hypotheses, I propose to record simultaneously from populations of neurons in six key cortical areas in mice performing a visual discrimination task. The task is designed to separate and quantify the contributions of each area to visual perception, decision-making, and action. The results will distinguish between the two competing hypotheses and reveal the distinct – or shared – roles of each cortical area. Then, I will put these conclusions to the test by silencing neurons in each of three areas and comparing the effects of inactivation on behavior. Together these experiments will reveal the fundamental mechanisms of how cortical circuits cooperate to produce visually-guided behaviors.I will perform these experiments in the Cortical Processing Laboratory at University College London, led by Kenneth Harris and Matteo Carandini.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON · LondonCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union