CRCNS: US-German Collaboration: Auditory and Spatial Sequence Encoding in the Hippocampus

CRCNS：美德合作：海马体的听觉和空间序列编码

• 批准号: 1010463
• 负责人: Stefan Leutgeb
• 金额: $ 35万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1010463&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CRCNS; US; German; Collaboration; Auditory

Complex cognitive functions such as spatial cognition, language development, and episodic memory require associations between multiple sensory experiences, such as images and sound, and require that associations are remembered in sequence. The rodent hippocampus has been one of the leading models for understanding neuronal mechanisms for remembering a sequence of spatial locations. Yet, it remains unknown whether the mechanisms that are used for encoding a path through space are the same as those that are used for encoding sequences that contain multiple modalities. To address this question, the auditory modality is of particular interest since it provides a mean to present a sequence of stimuli with high temporal precision and thus a mean to investigate time constraints for sequence learning. The proposed research investigates auditory sequence learning in a rodent species that is a hearing-specialist and tests whether the hippocampus of Mongolian gerbils can encode sequences of auditory stimuli with mechanisms similar to those used for spatial sequences. It will be tested whether place fields and theta phase precession exist in Mongolian gerbils, whether complex sound stimuli are encoded in the gerbil hippocampus in a spatially-independent manner or in association with the location of the animal, and whether sound sequences are encoded with network mechanisms related to those that are used for encoding spatial sequences. These questions will be addressed with single-unit recording from hippocampal principal cell populations of behaving animals, and experiments will be conducted in a virtual reality setup that allows for the precise delivery of auditory stimuli. Performing these experiments in a rodent species with an auditory specialization might result in important advances in addressing how the hippocampus encodes multimodal sequences. This research can provide important insight into neural network mechanisms for sequence coding and can lead to a better understanding of the contribution of the hippocampus to language development in humans.This project is jointly funded by Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience and the Office of International Science and Engineering. A companion project is being funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

复杂的认知功能，如空间认知，语言发展和情景记忆，需要多种感官体验之间的关联，如图像和声音，并要求按顺序记住关联。啮齿类动物的海马体一直是理解记忆空间位置序列的神经元机制的主要模型之一。然而，它仍然是未知的机制，用于编码通过空间的路径是相同的那些用于编码序列，包含多种形式。为了解决这个问题，听觉模态是特别感兴趣的，因为它提供了一种手段来呈现具有高时间精度的刺激序列，从而提供了一种手段来调查序列学习的时间约束。拟议的研究调查听觉序列学习的啮齿动物物种，是一个听力专家和测试是否蒙古沙鼠的海马可以编码序列的听觉刺激的机制类似于用于空间序列。它将被测试是否在蒙古沙鼠的地方领域和θ相位进动存在，是否复杂的声音刺激编码在沙鼠海马在一个空间独立的方式或与动物的位置，以及是否声音序列编码与网络机制相关的那些用于编码空间序列。这些问题将通过行为动物海马主要细胞群的单单位记录来解决，实验将在虚拟现实设置中进行，该设置允许精确传递听觉刺激。在具有听觉专门化的啮齿动物物种中进行这些实验可能会在解决海马体如何编码多模态序列方面取得重要进展。这项研究可以为序列编码的神经网络机制提供重要见解，并可以更好地了解海马体对人类语言发育的贡献。该项目由计算神经科学合作研究和国际科学办公室联合资助。与工程。 德国教育和研究部（BMBF）正在资助一个配套项目。