SGER: Electrophysiological Survey of Avian Hippocampal Neurons

9807476宾曼一项大量研究证实了海马体在学习和记忆中的关键作用。在动物身上，海马体对于学习太空尤为重要。特别令人感兴趣的是在老鼠身上进行的电生理学研究，这些研究证明了“定位细胞”的存在，这种细胞在动物处于其环境中的特定位置时会做出反应。一般认为，这些位置细胞参与环境空间的神经表征(MAP)，使动物能够有效地在目标位置之间导航。鉴于这项研究对于理解大脑/行为关系的重要性，令人惊讶的是，位置细胞只在大鼠身上进行了深入的研究。但是，大鼠的位置细胞的特性在多大程度上适用于其他脊椎动物，它们在多大程度上是海马体介导的空间表征的必要设计特征？这项拟议的研究旨在调查鸟类海马区中显示空间特异性的细胞(即位置样细胞)的可能存在和最终性质。海马区单个单位的电生理记录将来自允许在开阔野外环境中自由活动的鸽子。然后，单元活动数据将与来自鸽子的同时记录的位置信息相关联，以确定当鸽子在特定位置时，单元是否优先响应。然后，这些数据将被用来确定大鼠和鸽子是否在神经水平上以类似的方式代表空间。大鼠和鸽子的海马体用于空间学习，但在生活方式、行为和大脑组织方面存在很大差异。这项研究可能会从根本上改变我们看待海马体及其构建的空间表征的方式，控制海马体细胞活动的环境/行为特征，以及大脑和认知之间关系的演变。

9807476 Bingman A large body of research has established the crucial role of the hippocampus in learning and memory. In animals, the hippocampus is particularly important for learning about space. Of special interest are electrophysiological studies in rats that have demonstrated the existence of "place cells", cells that respond when an animal is in a particular location in its environment. It is generally believed that these place cells participate in the neural representation (map) of environmental space that enables animals to efficiently navigate among goal locations. Given the importance of this research for understanding brain/behavior relations, it is surprising that place cells have only been intensively studied in rats. But to what extent do the properties of place cells in rats generalize to other vertebrate species and to what extent are they a necessary design feature of hippocampal mediated spatial representations? The proposed research is designed to investigate the possible existence and eventual properties of cells in the bird hippocampus that display space specificity (i.e. place-like cells). Electrophysiological recordings of single units in the hippocampus will be taken from pigeons allowed to freely move in an open field environment. Unit activity data will then be correlated with simultaneously recorded location information from pigeons to determine if a unit responds preferentially when a pigeon is in a particular location. The data will then be used to determine whether rats and pigeons, species that have a hippocampus used for spatial learning but otherwise very different in terms of lifestyle, behavior and brain organization, represent space similarly at the neural level. The study could fundamentally change how we view the hippocampus and the spatial representations it constructs, the environmental/beha vioral features that control the activity of hippocampal cells, and the evolution of the relationship between brain and cognition.