Dynamics of hippocampal and neocortical neuronal representations of subject-moving-object-environment interrelationships (LTAUSA19135)
Basic information
Main investigator: RNDr. Eduard Kelemen, Ph.D.
Investigator: Prof. Saak Victor Ovsepian, M.D., Ph.D.
Main recipient: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Co-recipient: Institute of Physiology (IPHYS) of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS)
Partners: New York University (Prof. André A. Fenton), University of Arizona (Prof. Jean-Marc Fellous, Ph.D.)
Research period: 1/11/2019 – 31/12/2022
Total budget: 6,991,000 CZK
NIMH budget: 3,496,000 CZK
Supported by: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czech Republic
Annotation
Ability to orient and navigate in environment inhabited with moving objects, be it conspecifics, potential predators, prey or non-animate objects is crucial for survival and success in many animal species. The main goal of the present project is to investigate in laboratory rat neural circuitry involved in controlling interaction with moving objects (conspecifics or a mobile robot) in an environment. The role of the hippocampus and ACC in these cognitive processes has been already determined by our group (Telensky et al., 2011; Svoboda et al, 2017). Although cellular and cell ensemble substrate of moving-goal navigation is relatively elusive, specific cells in the hippocampus are known to be responsive or related to the dynamic goals (Kelemen and Fenton, 2016). Moreover, neurons in other brain structures, lateral entorhinal (Deshmukh and Knierim, 2011), perirhinal (Burke et al., 2012) and anterior cingulate (ACC) cortices are known to respond to various aspects of object properties and may therefore be sensitive to their continuous or one-time encoding. Our first goal is to characterize patterns of activation of cortical networks in rats that are involved in processing interaction between the subject, moving objects and environments. We will use immediate early gene imaging (Arc, Homer1a, zif 286) to track activity in hippocampus, lateral entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. We hypothesize that a specific activation pattern will be present in the aforementioned structures after a mobile, but not stationary, object exposure. In the second stage we will characterize short-time temporal dynamics of spiking action potential activity in the cortical areas during interaction between a rat, moving objects and their environments using single cell ensemble electrophysiological approaches.