Project Summary/Abstract Electromagnetic brain stimulation is a safe and proven way of controlling neural activity non-invasively with no implanted hardware or injected biochemical agents. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is FDA approved for treatment of drug resistant depression and obsessive compulsory disorder with a range of other clinical applications under investigation.
PROJECT SUMMARY Living organisms interact with complex environments that are inherently multisensory. Within these environments, the brain must integrate information from multiple sensory modalities, including the auditory and olfactory systems, for perception and behavior. However, despite the ubiquity and importance of multisensory integration, there is a critical gap in our understanding of how the brain integrates auditory and olfactory stimuli. This proposal will fill this knowledge gap by revealing the mechanisms underlying auditory-olfactory integration in the auditory cortex.
Project Summary / Abstract Astrocytes are pervasive throughout the CNS and are the most abundant non-neuronal cell type. They are an essential component of neural circuits, and increasing evidence demonstrates they are specialized for specific brain regions. For example, proteomic, transcriptomic, and electrophysiology experiments show that hippocampal and striatal astrocytes are distinct. However, it is unknown if astrocytes are heterogeneous within brain regions such as the striatum where neuronal subtypes are largely uniform.
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative promotes the development and application of technologies to describe the temporal and spatial dynamics of cell types and neural circuits in the brain.
Project Summary Episodic memory is the ability to recall details about prior experiences. Researchers have historically relied on controlled item-recognition paradigms, in complement to autobiographical recall tasks, to investigate the biological substrates of episodic memory. Contemporary theories posit that episodic memory is supported by a constellation of neocortical regions, in concert with the hippocampus and medial temporal cortices.
ABSTRACT/SUMMARY The mouse somatosensory thalamus participates in fundamental processes including sensory processing, sleep and pathological rhythmic behaviors like seizure. Local thalamic interneurons have been considerably overlooked due to their sparsity in the total neuronal population. However, their extensive dendritic arborizations spanning almost the entire breadth of the nucleus, together with my preliminary data, point to an important role for these cells in thalamic functions.
Project Summary Understanding cell-type-specific gene functions, expression dynamics, and regulatory mechanisms in complex brains is still challenging.
PROJECT SUMMARY Neurons in the visual cortex form an intricate connectivity structure and topographic arrangement. The structural and morphological organization of the neurons is known to constrain its functional properties. To understand these constraints, it is necessary to generate large-scale anatomical and functional measurements of the brain. Ongoing efforts in electron microscopy (EM) and fluorescent microscopy promise to massively accelerate the speed of generating such data.
