Engrams and neural circuitry for episodic memory

用于情景记忆的印迹和神经回路

• 批准号: 2265591
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2265591
• 关键词: Engrams; neural; circuitry; episodic; memory

Episodic memory stores contextual information of a particular experience within a temporally organised serial of events. Neurons within the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) can represent time inherently through the encoding of experience (Tsao et al., 2018) and may send that information to the medial entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus via long range projections. In vivo experiments have also shown that the LEC is crucial in episodic memory formation (Vandrey et al., 2019). This project will be investigating the neural circuitry within the LEC to understand how interactions between cell populations and how information is integrated to generate episodic-like memory in mice. This will be achieved using in vitro whole-cell patch clamp recordings with drug bath application to analyse electrophysiology, optogenetics with a pinpoint laser to activate specific LEC cell populations or synaptic sites, immunohistochemistry to visualise and categorise cell types and confocal microscopy. This work could help build a model of how time is processed within the brain and/or how animals organise the occurrence of specific experiences.

情景记忆在时间上组织的一系列事件中存储特定经历的上下文信息。外侧内嗅皮层（LEC）内的神经元可以通过编码经验内在地表示时间（Tsao et al.，2018年），并可能通过远程投射将该信息发送到内侧内嗅皮层和海马体。体内实验还表明，LEC在情景记忆形成中是至关重要的（Vanessa等人，2019年）。该项目将研究LEC内的神经回路，以了解细胞群之间的相互作用以及信息如何整合以在小鼠中产生类似情节的记忆。这将通过使用体外全细胞膜片钳记录和药物浴应用来分析电生理学、使用针尖激光激活特定LEC细胞群或突触位点的光遗传学、对细胞类型进行可视化和分类的免疫组织化学以及共聚焦显微镜来实现。这项工作可以帮助建立一个模型，研究大脑如何处理时间和/或动物如何组织特定体验的发生。