Visual-spatial processing within the retrosplenial cortex

压后皮质内的视觉空间处理

• 批准号: 2738950
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2738950
• 关键词: Visual; spatial; processing; within; retrosplenial

Learning about our spatial environments and how to navigate within these environments is critical for all species. It is a long-standing goal of neuroscience to understand how our brains support these processes. This goal is becoming ever more important as it has become apparent that spatial processing is particularly sensitive to both normal ageing and pathological ageing, such as Alzheimer's disease. The retrosplenial cortex appears to be particularly important for processing information about our environments. A recent study used an in vivo imaging technique (two-photon imaging) to identify patterns of neuronal activity that developed as animals learnt a spatial memory task; the more stable representations at the end of training were related to how well the animals performed the task. The retrosplenial cortex also contains cells that respond to visual stimuli and the movement. Combining visual-spatial and movement information at a neuronal level could be critical for the retrosplenial cortex's role in navigation. This project will build on these previous findings to try and understand, at a network level, how these spatial representations within the retrosplenial cortex are formed. An important question is how connections with other brain regions such as the hippocampus and visual cortex help these representations to develop and how the interaction across these brain structures changes from when an environment is new to when it has become familiar and well-learnt. The goals of the project will be achieved using a combining behaviour with in vivo neuronal imaging and in vivo electrophysiology. In addition, chemogenetic and optogenetic approaches would provide a means to temporarily inactivate or stimulate different pathways within the network to determine the effects of loss or gain of function. Together, this will help identify specific neuronal pathways related to the retrosplenial cortex that underpin the acquisition and retention of spatially-related representations.

了解我们的空间环境以及如何在这些环境中导航对所有物种都至关重要。神经科学的一个长期目标是了解我们的大脑如何支持这些过程。这一目标变得越来越重要，因为空间处理对正常衰老和病理性衰老（如阿尔茨海默病）特别敏感。压后皮质似乎对处理我们周围环境的信息特别重要。最近的一项研究使用体内成像技术（双光子成像）来识别动物学习空间记忆任务时产生的神经元活动模式;训练结束时更稳定的表征与动物执行任务的情况有关。压后皮质也包含对视觉刺激和运动做出反应的细胞。在神经元水平上结合视觉空间和运动信息对于压后皮质在导航中的作用可能是至关重要的。这个项目将建立在这些以前的发现，试图了解，在网络水平上，这些空间表征在压后皮层是如何形成的。一个重要的问题是，与海马体和视觉皮层等其他大脑区域的连接如何帮助这些表征发展，以及这些大脑结构之间的相互作用如何从新环境变为熟悉和熟悉。该项目的目标将通过结合体内神经元成像和体内电生理学来实现。此外，化学遗传学和光遗传学方法将提供一种暂时阻断或刺激网络内不同途径的方法，以确定功能丧失或获得的影响。总之，这将有助于确定特定的神经元通路相关的压后皮质，巩固收购和保留的空间相关的代表。