NEURAL CIRCUITS OF THE INFERIOR PARIETAL LOBULE

该子项目是利用 由NIH/NCRR资助的中心赠款提供的资源。子项目和 研究者（PI）可能从另一个NIH来源获得主要资金， 因此可以在其他CRISP条目中表示。列出的机构是 中心，不一定是研究者的机构。 本研究的目的是从行为猴顶下小叶的功能回路组织方面直接检验Mitchison和Cricks假说。为了研究活体顶叶下小叶的功能电路组织，我们花了三年时间完善了对行为猴子的遗传转化神经元进行双光子成像的能力。这些神经元被病毒转染以表达电压或钙的荧光传感器。因此，神经元可以以显微分辨率沿着其神经元活动成像。进行这些实验已经证明了行为猴制剂的许多优点。我们已经观察到神经元已知的深度从软膜表面，观察他们的精确的空间关系，彼此在切平面，并测量他们的调谐过程中的行为任务。事实上，我们已经对15个神经元进行了3小时的稳定连续双光子显微镜记录。这些进展支持检查特定的投射功能回路在行为过程中的关联皮层。我们的工作假设是：顶下小叶被组织成局部模块，所述局部模块包含具有相同投射模式和相同功能的神经元。我们将使用这些资金来计算分析在生物实验中收集的大型成像数据集。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The goal of this proposal is to directly examine Mitchison and Cricks hypothesis in terms of the functional circuit organization of the inferior parietal lobule in behaving monkey. To study the functional circuit organization of inferior parietal lobule in vivo, we have spent the last three years perfecting the ability to perform two-photon imaging of genetically transformed neurons in the behaving monkey. These neurons are virally transfected to express a fluorescent sensor for voltage or calcium. Thus a neuron can be imaged at microscopic resolution along with its neuronal activity. Performing these experiments has demonstrated many advantages for the behaving monkey preparation. We have observed neurons a known depth from the pial surface, observed their precise spatial relationships to each other in the tangential plane, and measured their tuning during a behavioral task. Indeed, we have made stable continuous two-photon microscopic recordings from 15 neurons for 3 hours. These advances support examining specific projective functional circuits in association cortex during behavior. Our working hypothesis is: the inferior parietal lobule is organized into local modules containing neurons with the same projection patterns and the same functions. We will be using these funds to computationally analyze the large imaging data sets collected in the biological experiments.