PROJECT SUMMARY The goal of this project is to provide the building blocks for an independent research program focused on the neural basis of reward-based memory across distributed brain networks. Humans and other animals experience events in the moments they occur while the brain has evolved powerful neural processes to re-activate the neurons encoding these events in the ‘time in-between’.
PROJECT SUMMARY The maintenance and function of the nervous system depends on cell-cell interactions among neuronal and non-neuronal cell populations, which occur through physically binding cell membrane surface or secreted proteins, triggering signaling cascades that activate cell-type gene regulatory programs. The cell-cell interactome responds and regulates the microenvironment which is altered in physiological processes such as brain development and aging, or during the onset and progression of different neuropsychiatric disorders.
Project Summary/Abstract Cloud-based analyses and easily shared data formats are revolutionizing neuroimaging. We will develop software to fill gaps created by these two trends. We will develop and refine software to visualize and analyze the data from the BRAIN Initiative.
Project Summary Single cell transcriptomics has transformed the field of brain cell type classification, allowing simultaneous measurement of enough molecular features from enough cells to categorize neurons quantitively and with high conservation across brain areas and species.
Electrocortical stimulation (ECS) has been used for functional mapping for many decades to identify brain areas that are “critical” for speech and language (i.e., that impair function when stimulated) prior to epilepsy or tumor surgery. It also is used to modulate neural activity, e.g., in directly treating epilepsy or pain. However, despite its long history of clinical use, the precise mechanisms of ECS are poorly understood, both on neuronal and network scales.
Project Summary Many advances in modern neuroscience rely on electrophysiological recordings of large neural populations (e.g. many hundreds of cells) or high-resolution measurements of animal behavior (e.g. from video). These datasets have unlocked a wide range of genuinely transformational scientific opportunities, as they enable us to draw reliable statistical inferences about individual animal subjects at precisely encapsulated moments in time. However, these statistical models are complex and non-trivial to implement in computer software.
Project Summary Categorizing individual neurons into different groups, or cell types, is a classical approach to studying the nervous system. With increasingly more tools being invented to observe the neurons, new criteria were created to characterize different aspects, or modalities, of the cells. While these modality-specific categorizations have enabled in-depth knowledge in neuroscience, the inconsistencies across different criteria leave data integration across modalities technically difficult.
SUMMARY The "NexGen" 7 Tesla MRI scanner at UC Berkeley is a unique resource that we wish to make available for neuroscience collaborations across the globe. It was specifically designed for extremely high resolution structural and functional neuroimaging at the scale of cortical laminae and columnar neurocircuit organization ("meso-scale"). To achieve this, the NexGen scanner builds upon existing standard 7T scanners and integrates a number of technological advances, creating synergistic improvements and gains in speed, resolution and signal.
HNN U24 DISSEMINATION PROJECT SUMMARY The Human Neocortical Neurosolver (HNN) neural modeling tool was developed with BRAIN Initiative funding (R01EB022889: 09/2016–06/2020) to meet the Initiative’s goal to “develop innovative technologies to understand brain circuits and ensembles of circuits that infor
Abstract In response to the BRAIN Initiative “Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data” FOA, we propose further developing nTracer2, a cloud-based platform for brain image visualization and neuron tracing in the web browser.
