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H2020Individual fellowship2017–2019

NeuralCoding · Probing principles of neural coding with all-optical interrogation in behaving mice

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-09-01 → 2019-08-31
EU contribution
€183,455
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

Probing principles of neural coding with all-optical interrogation in behaving mice

How is behaviourally relevant information encoded in the brain? Sensory neurons transform stimuli from the outside world into electrical signals. These signals are transmitted via the sensory pathway into neocortex, the area crucially involved in higher cognitive functions. Sensory signals then need to be interpreted with respect to the context they have been received in to trigger a meaningful response. The nature of the neural code that is used by neocortical networks to encode information and read-out behaviourally relevant variables is largely unknown. To start to tap into the complex coding of neurons in superficial neocortical layers we need to employ rich behavioural tasks to ensure, that the circuits of interest are engaged in meaningful computations. Due to the heterogeneity of the code we furthermore need to record from as many neurons as possible and apply perturbations to probe the causal relationship between neural codes and behaviour. This powerful combination of cutting-edge techniques will allow us significantly further our understanding of behaviourally-relevant coding in cortex. Every year over a third of the total EU population suffers from mental disorders. The results from this project will give insights into how the brain works through deciphering the neural code. This will strongly increase our handle on treating mental disorders to eventually progress from symptomatic to causal treatments of psychiatric and neurological disorders like schizophrenia, depression and dementia.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

How is information encoded in the brain? Sensory neurons transform information from the outside world into electrical signals which are transmitted via the sensory pathway into the neocortex. In the neocortex, the area crucially involved in higher cognitive functions, neurons form networks that exhibit complex time-varying patterns of activity. The nature of the neural code that is used by these neuronal networks to encode and pass on information by means of spatiotemporal activity patterns is largely unknown. I will combine large-scale neuronal recordings, advanced analysis tools and targeted manipulation of neuronal activity in the context of behaviour to extract population activity patterns that encode stimulus information and most crucially identify their functional relevance in the behaving animal. Specifically, I will establish a fine-tuned texture discrimination task in head-fixed mice that depends on information processing in layer 2/3 of barrel cortex. I will use two-photon calcium imaging to detect activity in large populations of neurons during task performance. I will apply advanced analysis tools including dimensionality reduction methods, dynamical systems approaches, and network simulations to extract and characterise stimulus and task-specific population activity patterns. In order to establish behavioural relevance I will perturb neural activity during two-photon imaging in the behaving mouse by using time-varying patterned optogenetic manipulation. This will allow me to directly probe the functional relevance of neural activity patterns and establish a causal link between identified population activity patterns and behaviour. This project will provide unprecedented insights into the nature of neural dynamics in neocortex as well as constraints for computational models of neocortical function that will be used to provide a mechanistic understanding of the neural code.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union