Understanding Circuits

PROJECT SUMMARY Corticospinal axonal projections are critical for mammalian motor control. Their length and complexity makes them vulnerable to an exceptionally wide range of neurological disease processes including cerebrovascular disorders, demyelinating diseases, ALS, spinal cord injury, and more. Corticospinal research has naturally focused on cortical and spinal mechanisms. However, corticospinal axons, like those of other types of pyramidal tract neurons, can send branches to the midbrain, pons, and medulla along the way to the spinal cord.

PROJECT SUMMARY Rodent models are highly valuable for elucidating the molecular and cellular mechanisms of chronic pain. Because rodents cannot articulate their sensation, “pain-like” behaviors have been used as the proxy. However, sensitivity and specificity of many existing methods for measuring rodent “pain” sensation, especially “chronic pain”, are uncertain. Here we propose to explore the feasibility of a largely automated and data-driven behavioral assay for identifying spontaneous pain in freely behaving mice.

R34 BRAIN Initiative. Optical interrogation of neural circuits in Manduca Project Summary / Abstract This BRAIN Circuits Planning Project will help to bridge the gap between well-established brain studies on the fruit fly, Drosophila, and complex behaviors exhibited more generally by other species.

PROJECT SUMMARY The cerebellum performs information processing for motor control and various cognitive functions in cooperation with the cerebral neocortex.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: A major goal in neuroscience is to dissect the neural circuits that support complex behaviors. Comparative approaches are fundamental to the success of this goal, to separate species specializations from general principles, and to understand the brain in light of its evolved functions. The optical tools that have revolutionized circuit neuroscience in rodents must be expanded to investigate a broad range of species.

Project Summary  Animals  interact  with  members  of  their  own  or  other  species  in  the  context  of  social  and  defensive  behaviors, predator-­prey relationships and symbioses. In all such contexts, execution of the appropriate  kind  of  interaction  depends  on  a  sensorimotor  pathway  that  transduces  information  about  another  organism and 

Understanding overlap in resting state fMRI networks at the single cell level: a cross-species approach Abstract Resting state functional connectivity MRI (rsfcMRI) is a popular tool to investigate the intrinsic functional organization of the brain into large scale networks. Multiple different lines of investigation have pointed to the importance of densely interconnected `hub' regions for cognition and behavior. However, the functional architecture of cellular circuits in these hub regions is unknown.

Understanding human brain function requires knowledge of its connectivity: how one structure causally influences other components of the network. A wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders prominently involve dysfunction of connectivity, including neurodegenerative diseases, autism, and mood disorders. Yet current methods provide only indirect measures of connectivity, and none can directly test how one brain structure causally influences another at the level of the whole brain.

Project Summary The rapid formation of new memories and the recall of old memories to inform decisions is essential for human cognition, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. The long-term goal of this research is a circuit-level understanding of human memory to enable the development of new treatments for the devastating effects of memory disorders. Our experiments utilize the rare opportunity to record in-vivo from human single neurons simultaneously in multiple brain areas in patients undergoing treatment for drug resistant epilepsy.

Project Summary/Abstract Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a surgical procedure that is used to treat the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's Disease (PD). In the process of surgically implanting the stimulating electrodes, surgeons and researchers have a unique opportunity to measure and manipulate the activity of individual neurons while the awake PD patient performs a perceptual, cognitive, or other kind of relatively simple task.