SGER: Electrophysiological Survey of Avian Hippocampal Neurons

小行星9807476 大量的研究已经确定了海马体在学习和记忆中的关键作用。 在动物中，海马体对于学习空间尤其重要。 特别令人感兴趣的是对大鼠的电生理学研究，这些研究表明存在“位置细胞”，即当动物处于其环境中的特定位置时作出反应的细胞。 一般认为，这些位置细胞参与了环境空间的神经表征（地图）， 以在目标位置之间有效地导航。 给定 这项研究对于理解大脑/行为关系的重要性，令人惊讶的是，位置细胞只在大鼠中进行了深入研究。 但是，大鼠的位置细胞的特性在多大程度上可以推广到其他脊椎动物，在多大程度上它们是一种必要的设计 特征 的 海马 介导 空间表征？ 这项研究的目的是调查可能存在的和最终的性质， 鸟类海马中显示空间特异性的细胞（即位置样细胞）。 海马体中单个单位的电生理记录将从允许在开放场地环境中自由移动的鸽子中获取。 单位活动数据将与 同时记录来自鸽子的位置信息，以确定当鸽子处于特定位置时单元是否优先响应。 然后，这些数据将被用来确定大鼠和鸽子是否在神经水平上类似地代表空间，这些物种具有用于空间学习的海马体，但在生活方式，行为和大脑组织方面非常不同。 这项研究可能会从根本上改变我们对海马体及其构建的空间表征的看法， 控制海马细胞活动的环境/行为特征，以及大脑与认知之间关系的演变。

9807476 Bingman A large body of research has established the crucial role of the hippocampus in learning and memory. In animals, the hippocampus is particularly important for learning about space. Of special interest are electrophysiological studies in rats that have demonstrated the existence of "place cells", cells that respond when an animal is in a particular location in its environment. It is generally believed that these place cells participate in the neural representation (map) of environmental space that enables animals to efficiently navigate among goal locations. Given the importance of this research for understanding brain/behavior relations, it is surprising that place cells have only been intensively studied in rats. But to what extent do the properties of place cells in rats generalize to other vertebrate species and to what extent are they a necessary design feature of hippocampal mediated spatial representations? The proposed research is designed to investigate the possible existence and eventual properties of cells in the bird hippocampus that display space specificity (i.e. place-like cells). Electrophysiological recordings of single units in the hippocampus will be taken from pigeons allowed to freely move in an open field environment. Unit activity data will then be correlated with simultaneously recorded location information from pigeons to determine if a unit responds preferentially when a pigeon is in a particular location. The data will then be used to determine whether rats and pigeons, species that have a hippocampus used for spatial learning but otherwise very different in terms of lifestyle, behavior and brain organization, represent space similarly at the neural level. The study could fundamentally change how we view the hippocampus and the spatial representations it constructs, the environmental/beha vioral features that control the activity of hippocampal cells, and the evolution of the relationship between brain and cognition.