Mechanisms of neural circuit dynamics in working memory

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Working memory, the ability to temporarily hold multiple pieces of information for mental manipulation, is central to virtually all cognitive abiliies. Working memory has been closely associated with multiple kinds of neural activity dynamics, such as persistent neural activity, activity ramps, and activity sequences. The neural circuit mechanisms of these dynamics remain unclear. This proposal will apply advanced technologies such as virtual reality, automated monitoring of behavior, in vivo microscopy, ontogenetic, and neural circuit reconstruction to solve fundamental problems in the understanding of working memory. The accumulation of evidence over time scales of seconds, a type of working memory critical for decision-making, will be used as a test bed for studying working memory. The proposal will build upon a rodent evidence-accumulation paradigm that allows quantitative, temporally precise parameterization of working memory and decision-making. The paradigm will be implemented with head-fixed rodents behaving in a virtual reality system (Aim 1), providing mechanical stability that enables the use of two-photon calcium imaging to observe neural activity related to working memory in the neocortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum (Aim 3). Brain activity will also be perturbed using ontogenetic to probe the roles of brain regions and specific cell types in the formation and stabilization of memory (Aim 2). Finally, we will develop methods for probing the roles of cell types and connectivity in working memory through correlative serial electron microscopy and light microscopy as well as imaging of population responses to ontogenetic stimulation of single cells or groups of cells (Aim 4). This three-year project will produce a catalog of the types of neural circuit dynamics that are related to working memory across many brain regions. In subsequent years, this catalog will be mechanistically investigated by the anatomical and physiological methods developed in Aim 4. The long-term goal of this project is to arrive at a complete, brain-wide understanding of the cellular and circut mechanisms of activity dynamics related to working memory. The understanding is expected to take the form of a new generation of models containing cognitive variables distributed across brain regions, as well as models that explicitly represent neural circuit dynamics. This achievement will be a crucial step towards a mechanistic understanding of the neural basis of cognition.