CRCNS: Modulating Neural Population Interactions between Cortical Areas

了解大脑的不同部分如何沟通可能是神经科学最基本的问题，因为它是理解所有大脑功能和疾病的核心。它具有临床重要性，因为许多脑部疾病——自闭症、精神分裂症、注意力缺陷障碍和许多其他疾病——被认为是由于大脑各区域之间的交流受损，而注意力在每一种主要的神经系统疾病中都受到损害。尽管大量的研究已经让人们了解了单个神经元是如何对闪光或简单的视觉对象（如线条）做出反应的，但相对较少的工作是针对明确地了解神经元群体如何相互交流，以及这种交流如何使人们专注于重要信息并过滤掉干扰。该提案中描述的研究旨在揭示大脑的不同部分如何沟通以支持视觉感知。研究的核心问题是，大脑的不同部分是如何沟通的，以帮助选择视觉世界中值得关注的部分，而忽略那些分散注意力的部分。具体的研究目标是：(1)揭示视觉和前额叶皮层之间的交流是如何随着时间的推移而调节的，以及这些相互作用是如何影响行为的；(2)开发统计方法来优化使用刺激干预这些大脑区域的能力；(3)将这些方法与前额叶皮层的微刺激结合起来，调节视觉反应，进而调节注意力机制。总之，这些目标将对理解注意力、神经元交流和操纵神经系统的介入方法产生重要影响。

Understanding how different parts of the brain communicate is perhaps the most fundamental question of neuroscience because it is at the heart of understanding all brain functions and disorders. It is of clinical importance because numerous brain diseases - autism, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, and many others - are thought to be due to impaired communication among regions of the brain, and attention in particular is impaired in every major neurological disorder. Even though numerous studies have led to understanding of how single neurons respond to flashes of light or simplified visual objects like lines, relatively little work has been directed toward explicitly learning how groups of neurons communicate with each other, and how that communication enables attending to important information and filtering out distractions. The research described in this proposal seeks to reveal how different parts of the brain communicate to support visual perception. The central question addressed is how different parts of the brain communicate to help select the parts of the visual world that warrant focus, and ignore the parts of the world that are distracting. The specific research aims are designed to (1) reveal how communication between visual and prefrontal cortex modulates over time and how those interactions impact behavior (2) develop statistical approaches to optimize the ability to use stimulation to intervene between these brain regions, and (3) apply these methods with microstimulation in prefrontal cortex to modulate visual responses and, in turn, attentional mechanisms. Together, these aims will have important consequences for the understanding of attention, neuronal communication, and interventional approaches to manipulate the nervous system.