Research Projects

Project Summary To navigate and guide locomotion in a complex 3D environment, humans and animals must make countless judgments of their direction of self-motion, or heading. Each of these is a multisensory perceptual decision, able to achieve greater accuracy and precision by combining signals from the visual, vestibular, and kinesthetic senses. At the same time, the brain must decide when to commit to a course of action (e.g., to quickly change direction to avoid an obstacle), and make predictions of the likelihood of success in that action.

PROJECT SUMMARY In social species, social relationships can exert profound influences on individuals’ behavioral and physiological states. In particular, social interactions can help reduce negative emotional state induced by physical or psychological stressors, a phenomenon known as social buffering. Social buffering provides an important means by which the social environment facilitates stress coping and resilience and benefits health and well-being.

Abstract Sleep occupies a large part of our lives and is widely believed to perform essential functions. During sleep, the neuronal rules of engagement and population dynamics are clearly different than waking. There is extensive evidence that one primary function of sleep is to consolidate memories formed during waking. Recent work, however, suggests that sleep may also actively alter neural connections to achieve forgetting (‘unlearning’). How the brain balances learning and forgetting, exactly how sleep contributes, and the ultimate effects on ensembles and behavior are unknown.

PROJECT SUMMARY Survival in dynamic environments demands that behaviors are flexible and adaptive. An organism must make predictions about which actions lead to rewards, calculate how outcomes differ from those predictions (prediction errors), and adapt a behavioral strategy accordingly. Neurons encoding prediction errors can be found throughout many reward-related brain structures, with the highest densities in the VTA and the lateral habenula (LHb).

Project Summary Public and private research funders have heavily invested in the application of implantable neurotechnologies to improve the management of treatment-resistant conditions and loss of function (e.g., deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems for recovery after traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, disorders of consciousness, movement disorders, and psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression). These devices are trialed with people who have had severe impairments and treatment-resistant disorders for many years.

PROJECT SUMMARY: Long-term neural recording using implantable devices has provided important discoveries that have shaped our understanding of how the neural circuitry of the brain works and, more recently, has been used experimentally to treat such disorders as paralysis that provide hope for many suffering from this disability. This promising technology has been challenging to implement reliably over long periods, limiting its use as a chronic basic science tool and threatening its widespread clinical utility.

Project Summary/Abstract The BRAIN Initiative is supporting a broad portfolio of neuroscience research aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the brain.

ABSTRACT BRAIN Initiative-funded, large-scale approaches to classify neurons based on transcriptomic, morphological and electrical properties have unveiled dozens of unique cell classes in the mouse brain.

There is a substantial need to understand the fundamental biological mechanisms of neuromodulation therapies in order to improve clinical delivery and outcomes (RFA-NS-20-006). Intractable chronic pain of the back and limbs continues to be challenging to treat clinically, and spinal cord stimulation (SCS) devices have experienced tremendous market growth despite a lack of an accepted mechanistic basis.

Despite widespread clinical use, the theoretical framework by which to understand safety of electrical stimulation through implanted electrodes is surprisingly limited. Most of our current understanding of stimulation safety was phenomenologically determined in the 80s and 90s using very limited electrode geometries, materials, stimulation systems, and stimulation locations.