Spontaneous activity · Functional role of neuronal spontaneous activity for sensory processing
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-09-01 → 2020-08-31
- EU contribution
- €148,636
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Functional role of neuronal spontaneous activity for sensory processing
The brain is always spontaneously active even in the absence of explicit stimuli coming from the outside world. What is the meaning of such activity? While it is now accepted that spontaneous activity does not simply represent “noise” in the brain, its functional role remains elusive. In particular, it remains unclear whether changes in the population activity of cortical neurons can affect performances in tasks that require discriminating a feature of a stimulus, for example, the frequency (low/high) of a sound. In this project we aimed at answering this intriguing question. Answering this question is of paramount importance for many reasons. First, it would solve a long-studied mystery in neuroscience. Second, it would provide indications of how altered spontaneous activity, for example in diseases such as Schizophrenia, may functionally affect brain function. Third, understanding the causal role of spontaneous activity on behavioral performances may lead to potentially innovative technological avenues to boost human performances. The objective of this study is to implement cutting-edge behavioral, electrophysiological and computational techniques to elucidate the functional role of spontaneous neuronal activity for the decision making process. To achieve this goal, we aim at creating expectations about upcoming sensory stimuli in head-fixed mice and test whether such expectation may affect behavior and could be modulated optogenetically. Furthermore, we want to understand the neuronal basis of how expectation can affect behavioral responses.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Understanding how the brain processes sensory stimuli to guide behavior is still an unresolved mystery in neuroscience. The view that behavior may be passively guided by the senses is challenged by the observation that the brain is always spontaneous active. Even cortical areas that are supposed to represent features of the sensory environment manifest spontaneous activity (SA) in the absence of external inputs. The similarity between SA and sensory-evoked activity (EA) has been interpreted as learning of features of the external world by cortical circuits. However, the mechanism by which SA affects brain computation is largely unknown. In this proposal we aim at elucidating the functional role of SA for processing of sensory information in the auditory modality. We will take advantage of state-of-the-art tools available in mice to modulate and record the activity of large populations of neurons across cortical layers. Mice will be trained to perform frequency (or location) discrimination tasks and expectation will be generated by using trials in blocks in which the sound location (or frequency) probability will vary. We hypothesize that the induced expectation will facilitate sensory discrimination and manifest as specific patterns of SA before stimulus presentation. We will then manipulate optogenetically auditory cortex to causally test the role of SA in the task. Finally, we will record the simultaneous activity of a large number of neurons to understand mechanistically how SA may affects the processing of incoming sensory stimuli. Our study has the potential to uncover new neuronal mechanisms underlying sensory processing.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- FUNDACAO D. ANNA DE SOMMER CHAMPALIMAUD E DR. CARLOS MONTEZ CHAMPALIMAUD · LISBOACoordinatorPortugal
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union