Completed Brain & Nervous System Psychology & Behaviour

Organization of large neuronal populations during behavior

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University College London
Funding £3.6M
Period Apr 2017 — Apr 2022

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A mouse deciding whether to turn left or right in a maze will have over 10,000 neurons firing across its brain at once, and researchers now have the tools to watch them all in real time. Until recently, scientists could only record from a few dozen neurons at a time, leaving fundamental questions unanswered: how do different brain areas coordinate their activity, and how does that coordination produce behaviour? This project will combine optical recordings, ultrasound imaging, and next-generation electrode arrays to map brain-wide neuronal populations in mice during rest, movement, sensory tasks, and goal-directed navigation. The work is fundamental science—it does not aim to treat a disease or build a device. But understanding how large populations of neurons organise themselves during behaviour could eventually reshape how we think about brain disorders such as epilepsy or Parkinson’s, where coordination between regions goes awry. Past fundamental research on neural circuits has already led to deep brain stimulation therapies; this project lays the groundwork for the next generation of such insights.

View original technical description
Behavior arises from the coordinated function of vast numbers of neurons across the brain. However, we lack answers to fundamental questions concerning this coordinated function. How is the activity of multiple brain areas globally structured? How does this global structure relate to the firing of local neuronal populations? And what is the role of this coordination in producing animal behavior? Until recently, these questions were barely answerable: one could only record from tens or hundreds of neurons, and during single behaviors. They are now answerable, thanks to new, powerful techniques available in the brain of the mouse: optical recordings of over 10,000 neurons simultaneously, optical and ultrasound measures of mesoscopic activity in multiple brain regions, next-generation electrode arrays that record thousands of neurons across multiple areas, and temporally targeted optogenetic manipulations. We will combine these techniques to understand how brain-wide neuronal populations operate in the mouse brain during different behavioral conditions: rest, passive sensory stimulation, locomotion, sensory discrimination, and goal-directed navigation. These data will provide an unprecedented view on the neuronal-level organization of populations across the brain during behavior.

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Researchers

Matteo Carandini (EPMC Awardee)

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Original classification

Investigator Award in Science

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