Funded Awards

Perceptual decision-making is a complex cognitive function critical for health, reproductive success, and survival. In this process, an informed choice based on sensory evidence is made through engagement of circuits across the brain.

Project Summary (Overall: Cracking the Olfactory Code) Sensation drives perception, which informs decisions and actions. Olfaction is the main sense used by most animals to interact with the environment.

Despite substantial progress characterizing neural responses, it is particularly challenging to determine causal interactions within recurrently connected circuits due to the confounding influence of the interconnections.

Humans and animals often make decisions under uncertainty, whereby each decision affects not only the immediate reward gain but also longer-term information gain.

Throughout the brain, specialized systems carry out different but complementary functions, sometimes independently but often in cooperation. However, we do not understand how their activity is dynamically coordinated, and dysregulation of this is associated with many mental health conditions.

The overall goal of this project is to develop a reinforcement learning (RL) theory of motivation, understood here as motivational salience, and to test the conclusions of this theory using experimental observations obtained in the ventral pallidum (VP).

Abstract Recent technological advances have led to the realization recording devices that can sample neuronal activity from up to a few hundred channels in a limited area.

Neuroscientific data contain information from an incredible diversity of species, are generated by a plethora of devices, and encapsulate the results of scientific thinking and decision making.

Neuromodulation is crucial for information processing throughout the brain. Neuromodulators influence neuronal function by acting through G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to alter neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission, which can then affect circuit functions.

Project Summary Behavior is movement, and the effective and efficient execution of movement has served as a fundamental evolutionary force shaping the form and function of the nervous system.

The mammalian cortex plays a critical role in integrating multiple streams of information to guide adaptive behavior. For example, head direction (HD) information is combined with visual and spatial input in the mouse retrosplenial cortex (RSC).

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The ability to track electrical activity in genetically defined neurons deep in the brain has long been sought by neuroscientists to unravel the functions of neuronal circuits in health and disease.

Project Summary The overall premise of this proposal is to understand how the transformation of the signals from proprioceptive afferents within muscles leads to the representation of movements in somatosensory cortex.

Brain dynamic low-frequency (

Abstract Synaptic transmission is mainly mediated by classical neurotransmitters such as glutamate and g-amino butyric acid (GABA) which transduce fast information flow in the brain. This process is tightly regulated by neuromodu- lators including monoamines and neuropeptides.

PROJECT SUMMARY Synaptic dysfunction is a common feature of neuropsychiatric disease. For example, a hallmark of age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is synaptic fibrilization and aggregation of key proteins that participate in synapse and cell loss.

Optogenetics and chemo-optogenetics are powerful tools for modulating cell activities with light.

PROJECT SUMMARY In this proposal we aim to identify gene regulatory elements that permit the targeting and manipulation of brain circuit models of human brain function.

Neuropeptides are important signaling molecules that regulate brain states, modify neural activity and control vascular tone in the nervous system.