Understanding Circuits

Project Summary/Abstract Decades of research and clinical observations have established that episodic memory, the ability to remember recently experienced events, depends on the hippocampus and associated structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including entorhinal, perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices [1, 2]. It is thought that the neuronal mechanisms supporting episodic memory for spatial context involves place and grid cells found in the MTL that increase in firing rate when an animal is in a specific location during navigation [3-7].

A Brain Circuit Program for Understanding the Sensorimotor Basis of Behavior Abstract The Project team's long-term goal is to develop a comprehensive theory of animal behavior that explicitly incorporates neural processes operating across hierarchical levels — from circuits that regulate the action of individual muscles to those that regulate behavioral sequences and decisions. Our innovative approach is guided by the notion that different brain regions are not linked within a single neuroanatomical tier, but rather constitute a series of hierarchically nested feedback loops.

Project Summary During perceptual decision-making, populations of neurons, arranged in highly interconnected microcircuits, work together to encode sensory stimuli and to transform sensory perception into appropriate behavioral choices. A fundamental gap in our knowledge about perceptual decision-making is understanding how the connectivity in cortical microcircuits shapes dynamics and information codes in populations of neurons.

Summary/Abstract Pain is a national health challenge costing our economy more than $600 Billions per year.

Project Summary Sequences of neuronal activity are thought to underlie planning, preparation, and production of voluntary skilled behaviors.

Project Summary How does the brain transform sensory information into complex behavior? The objective of this proposal is to identify the relevant neurons across the brain that are necessary to produce a relatively simple motivated behavior to study and identify fundamental principles underlying coding. Sensory-to-behavior circuits must contain a variety of neural computations such as those that determine the identity and meaning of the sensed cues, gauge internal state, remember previous experience, and command muscle action.

Project Summary / Abstract This project is a collaboration between researchers at four universities to examine how the brain makes decisions. When a human or any animal moves through the world, it must make constant decisions about what to do next. These decisions are based on the state of the animal, its past history, and its future goals.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Social interactions, a ubiquitous aspect of our everyday life, are critical to the health and survival of the species, but little is known about their underlying neural computations. The major limitation preventing our understanding of the neural underpinnings of social cognition is the lack of a suitable framework to allow us to study how it emerges in real time from interactions among brain networks.

Project Summary  Despite the enormous complexity of the brain, it is becoming increasingly apparent that structures like the  cerebral cortex are modular, relying on a set of canonical computations that occur across brain regions and  modalities to mediate perception, cognition and behavior.  One important example of a canonical computation  is&

Project Summary Dopamine neurons (DNs) are key regulators of motivated behaviors, and defects in dopamine signaling may underlie some psychiatric disorders including addiction, depression, and schizophrenia, as well as neurological disorders such as Parkinson's. Much of the work in this area has been based on the dogma that DNs encode reward prediction errors (RPE) and that they do so in a uniform manner. However, work from several groups, including ours, indicates that DNs projecting to different targets exhibit distinct properties and serve distinct functions.