Perturbations and Behavior

项目概要：项目1，扰动和行为 工作记忆是一种在头脑中暂时保存多条信息以进行操作的能力， 对几乎所有认知能力都至关重要这一多方面的研究项目旨在全面 在多个大脑区域中剖析这种能力的神经回路机制。的各个部分 项目在概念上是一致的，部分原因是它们都涉及经过训练的啮齿动物， 决策任务是基于感官证据的逐渐积累，因此依赖于 工作记忆工作记忆和决策的神经相关性分布在一个非常大的区域， 广泛的皮质和皮质下区域，但这些区域的完整列表实际上导致 这些进程-最重要的是，其贡献的性质可能是什么-仍然遥不可及。 一个重要的障碍是，这些过程可以迅速发展（例如，从加载 直到最近， 例如抑制性光遗传学分子，可以足够快地开启和关闭， 不同的阶段。本项目将使用光遗传失活结合这一套密切相关的 工作记忆和决策任务。这些任务非常适合 定量行为分析这些特征将允许系统和全面的定量探测 的因果关系的贡献，工作记忆和决策的一个非常大的一组区域在整个 背侧皮质、更深的皮质和靶向的皮质下区域，包括小脑、腹侧皮质、海马和小脑。 被盖区、海马体和纹状体。其他的实验将研究 不同的基因定义的细胞类型，在目标大脑区域。综合起来，这些实验 预计将提供有关大脑中特定神经元相互作用如何产生 工作记忆和决策，增加有关认知的大脑基础的知识。

Project Summary: Project 1, Perturbations and Behavior Working memory, the ability to temporarily hold multiple pieces of information in mind for manipulation, is central to virtually all cognitive abilities. This multi-component research project aims to comprehensively dissect the neural circuit mechanisms of this ability across multiple brain areas. The individual parts of the project cohere conceptually, in part, because they all involve rodents trained to perform a type of decision-making task that is based on the gradual accumulation of sensory evidence and thus relies on working memory. Neural correlates of working memory and decision-making are distributed across a very wide range of cortical and subcortical regions, but a complete listing of which of these regions actually cause these processes—and most importantly, what the nature of their contribution might be—remains out of reach. A significant obstacle has been that these processes can evolve rapidly (for example, going from loading an item into working memory, to holding it in memory, to retrieving it) and it is only recently that inactivation tools, such as inhibitory optogenetic molecules, could be turned on and off fast enough to distinguish between different phases. This project will use optogenetic inactivation in combination with this set of closely related working memory and decision-making tasks for the head-fixed rodent. The tasks are amenable to highly quantitative behavioral analysis. These features will allow a systematic and comprehensive quantitative probe of the causal contribution to working memory and decision-making of a very large set of regions across the dorsal cortex, deeper cortices, and targeted subcortical regions, including the cerebellum, the ventral tegmental area, the hippocampus, and the striatum. Other experiments will study the causal contributions of different genetically defined cell types, in targeted brain regions. Taken together, these experiments are expected to provide detailed information about how the interaction of particular neurons in the brain produces working memory and decisions, increasing knowledge about the brain basis of cognition.