The Role of Serotonin in the Modulation of Multisensory Spatial Attention

注意力通过调节感觉处理来提高知觉能力。上丘是大脑的一个区域，通过引导行为朝向或远离显著刺激，以反射的方式引导注意力。5-羟色胺是一种由大脑自然产生的化学物质，它可以通过抑制与正在进行的行为无关的感觉信息，根据行为背景调节我们的感官器官感知感觉信息的方式。我们最近开发了一项行为任务，要求小鼠报告显著的听觉或视觉刺激的位置。虽然老鼠的表现主要取决于刺激的显着性，但它们的行为也受到背景信息的影响。小鼠在区块中执行这项任务，其中只有一种模式得到奖励，因此它们需要在听觉和视觉信息之间切换注意力以获得奖励。这项任务使我们能够评估SC在空间反射性注意中的作用，以及当只有一种感觉通道与任务相关时，这一过程是如何被5-羟色胺以上下文相关的方式调节的。在这个项目中，我们的目标是研究5-羟色胺如何通过激活不同的受体来调节注意力。不同类型的5-羟色胺受体故障与几种神经疾病的发病机制有关，这突显了研究5-羟色胺受体如何在健康大脑中介导注意过程的重要性。我们的项目将在多个尺度上进行，因此，血清素的作用是在单个神经细胞水平上，跨越多个大脑区域和单个生物体。我们针对特定大脑区域的个体受体的方法将使我们能够最大限度地减少动物数量，同时生成完整而详细的5-羟色胺功能模型。该项目将使我们能够发现治疗各种神经疾病的药物的新靶点，这些疾病影响着英国和世界各地数百万人。

Attention improves perceptual abilities by modulating sensory processing. The superior colliculus is a brain region involved in directing attention on a reflexive manner by guiding orienting behaviours towards or away from salient stimuli. Serotonin is a chemical naturally produced by the brain that can modulate how sensory information is perceived by our sensory organs according to behavioural context, via suppressing sensory information irrelevant to the ongoing behaviour. We have recently developed a behavioural task that requires mice to report the location of a salient auditory or visual stimulus. While the performance of the mice depends primarily on the saliency of the stimulus, their behaviour is also modulated by contextual information. Mice perform the task in blocks where only one modality is rewarded, such that they need to switch attention between auditory and visual information to obtain a reward. This task allows us to assess the role of the SC in spatial reflexive attention and how this process is modulated by serotonin in a context dependent manner, when only one of the sensory modalities is relevant for the task. In this project we aim to study how serotonin modulates attention through the activation of different receptors. The malfunction of different serotonin receptor types has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several neurological disorders, highlighting the importance of studying how serotonin receptors mediate attentional processes in the healthy brain. Our project will work on multiple scales, such that serotonin action is characterised at the level of single nerve cells, across multiple brain areas and in individual organisms. Our approach to target individual receptors in specific brain regions will enable us to minimise animal numbers while generating a complete and detailed model of serotonin function. This project will allow us to uncover new targets for drugs to treat various types of neurological disorders that affect millions of people in the UK and worldwide.