Cortical-hippocampal interactions underlying rapid learning in naturalistic environments

项目总结/摘要 哺乳动物的大脑存储信息和以后检索信息的能力是惊人的。详细，复杂 记忆可以在一次曝光后形成，并且这些记忆可以保留几十年。 这种能力在海马体受损后受到损害，海马体之间的相互作用 而新皮层被认为是系统记忆巩固的关键。记忆力受损是一种 颞叶癫痫、阿尔茨海默病、抑郁症和精神分裂症等疾病的后果 影响了超过2500万美国人。然而，我们对电路的理解 支持记忆巩固和快速新学习的机制是不完整的，特别是在 灵长类大脑我们的长期目标是帮助更好地理解神经机制， 是记忆过程的基础，使我们更接近于为这些残疾患者开发新的治疗方法。 心理学理论和行为学研究表明，快速的、单次试验的积累， 信息是由先前的知识，一个“心理图式”，提供了一个框架，新的 信息可以被吸收。海马体被认为是提取和代表的关键 在不同的学习片段中保持一致，这些一致构成了认知图式。 确定海马体是如何支持这种认知框架的，对于理解海马体的功能至关重要。 大脑皮层与新皮层的相互作用是记忆巩固所必需的。提出的实验 这里将直接研究学习和巩固过程中大脑皮层的相互作用。我们建议 利用最新的技术发展来促进我们对支持机制的理解， 快速的新学习。具体来说，我们建议从单个神经元进行大规模记录 在接受训练的猴子的海马体、顶叶皮层和前额叶皮层中， 虚拟环境中的物体-位置关联。我们将使用稳定和不稳定的环境来检查 图式对联想学习和神经活动的影响，我们将跟踪学习过程中的神经活动 研究支持图式形成的机制。拟议的实验具有 以下潜在的结果：1）识别海马、顶叶和海马中单个单位的网络活动， 和前额叶皮层支持物体-位置关联学习，2）识别跨- 在图式发展过程中通过同步振荡活动进行区域交流， 学习，和3）确定在睡眠和安静清醒期间的大脑皮层相互作用，并确定 这种相互作用如何影响记忆巩固。

Project Summary/Abstract The ability of the mammalian brain to store and later retrieve information is remarkable. Detailed, complex memories can be formed after as little as one exposure, and those memories can be retained for decades. This ability is compromised following damage to the hippocampus, and interaction between the hippocampus and the neocortex is thought to be critical for systems memory consolidation. Impaired memory is a debilitating consequence of diseases such as temporal lobe epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, depression, and schizophrenia that collectively affect over twenty-five million Americans. However, our understanding of the circuit mechanisms that support memory consolidation and rapid new learning is incomplete, particularly in the primate brain. Our long-range goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie memory processes to bring us closer to developing new therapies for these disabled patients. Psychological theories and behavioral studies have suggested that rapid, single-trial accumulation of information is facilitated by prior knowledge, a “mental schema” that provides a framework onto which new information can be assimilated. The hippocampus is considered to be critical for extracting and representing regularities that hold across learning episodes, and these regularities constitute the cognitive schema. Determining how the hippocampus supports this cognitive framework will be critical to understanding the hippocampal-neocortical interactions that are necessary for memory consolidation. The experiments proposed here will directly examine hippocampal-cortical interactions during learning and consolidation. We propose to utilize newly available technical developments to advance our understanding of the mechanism that support rapid new learning. Specifically, we propose to perform large-scale recordings from individual neurons throughout the hippocampus, parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex in monkeys trained to perform a task of object-place association in virtual environments. We will use stable and unstable environments to examine the impact of a schema on association learning and neural activity, and we will track neural activity during learning to investigate the mechanisms that support the formation of a schema. The proposed experiments have the following potential outcomes: 1) to identify the network activity across single units in the hippocampus, parietal and prefrontal cortex in support of object-place association learning, 2) to identify the dynamics of cross- regional communication through synchronized oscillatory activity during schema development and rapid learning, and 3) to identify hippocampal-cortical interaction during sleep and quiet wakefulness and determine how this interaction impacts memory consolidation.