PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Humans have highly advanced cognitive abilities and motor skills, characteristics which are reflected in the enlarged size and cell diversity of our central nervous system (CNS). My overall goal is to profile and compare progenitor cell diversity in humans, non-human primates and rodents, and thereby identify the origins of increased cell diversity and size of the human CNS.
PROJECT SUMMARY The world around us has a statistical structure that we can use to improve our choices. Learning the underlying structure by identifying key features, such as the rate of change, is useful for adapting and optimizing our decision-making strategies. However, learning these features requires accumulating evidence across multiple timescales: a short timescale that considers explicit evidence for the current decision, and a long timescale that supports latent environmental feature inference.
Project Summary Gaining genetic access to specific cell types in rodents, non-human primates and other vertebrate species is critical for enabling targeted circuit manipulations to understand normal brain function and brain. The use of gene regulatory elements for targeted gene expression is transforming brain circuitry studies. In response to RFA-MH-21-180, the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) team led by Dr. Xiangmin Xu at the Minority Serving Institution (MSI)-designated institution, University of California, Irvine (UCI) will collaborate with Dr.
ABSTRACT The generation of scientifically rich, high resolution neuroimaging volumes continues to increase in extent and rate due to the advancement of new Electron Microscopy (EM) and X-ray Microtomography (XRM) imaging sys- tems and data processing methodologies.
Direct local electrical stimulation (DLES) is an increasingly important therapeutic tool for treating brain disorders such as Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and OCD. There is considerable disagreement, however, as to how neural stimulation, especially at the scale of neurons, affects human brain function. This lack of understanding hampers the design and implementation of more effective stimulation approaches, particularly in the cortex.
Abstract Humans can rapidly regulate actions according to updated demands of the environment. A key component of action regulation is action inhibition, the failure of which contributes to various neuropsychiatric diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome.
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Individuals make choices and prioritize actions using complex processes that assign value to rewards and associated stimuli based on prior experience. In our modern environment, we are surrounded by an abundance of stimuli that fight for our attention and often hinder goal-directed behavior. Stimuli, or cues in our environment, attain control over behavior via Pavlovian learning, such that previously neutral stimuli that predict reward acquire motivational properties and are thereby transformed into attractive and desirable incentive stimuli.
Project Summary Mother-infant bonding is a key relationship that lays a foundation for wellness throughout life. Social recognition is an important component of this relationship, as infants imprint on the smell of their mothers and use olfaction to distinguish their mother from others.
PROJECT SUMMARY: Animals constantly detect different environmental stimuli and change their behavior or physiology based on their internal state. How animals integrate the external multiple sensory information with the internal state is largely unclear. The specific goal of this proposal is to explore the neural circuits and mechanisms of internal state- dependent modulation of multiple sensory integrations. We will draw on a powerful, versatile, and relatively simple genetic model, Drosophila, to address the neural mechanisms of taste-temperature integration.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: Vision and touch share a critical function—perception of 3D object shape. We use vision and touch both alternatively and simultaneously to recognize, understand, and interact physically with real world objects, based on detailed apprehension of their 3D shapes and mechanical functionality.
