Last Updated on October 12, 2020
Several users of our O’Hara behavioral testing systems are presenting their research at SfN 2019 this year!
Check out what they’ve been working on.
Benucci and colleagues at RIKEN Center for Brain Science are currently investigating how neural networks in the visual system interact with environmental cues during the decision making process using the Self Head-Restraining Platform for mice. Below is a summary of what they plan to present at SFN2019
The role of neural networks within the visual system in guiding perceptual decision making processes is largely unknown. Orlandi and colleagues in Dr. Andrea Benucci’s lab hypothesized that neuronal activation in visual cortices was necessary to provide predictive information about either the animals’ choices or task outcome (or both) during the decision making process. To test this, they analyzed calcium signals of GCaMP infected neurons in mice implanted with cranial windows over occipital-parietal cortical areas as they performed a two-alternative forced choice orientation discrimination task (See an example of the task below). By using large cranial windows, Orlandi and colleagues had optical access to between 10-12 cortical areas at the same time, allowing them to visualize signals from large-scale and distributed neural networks within the visual system. What they found was that large-scale activations of occipital-parietal visual areas did in fact hold predictive information about the animal’s decision.
Example of the two-alternative forced choice orientation discrimination task
Self Head-Restraining Platform: An automated platform with voluntary head fixation
Example of GCaMP expression in mouse cortex. Adapted from the Britt Lab at McGill University
To learn more about Benucci’s research application of the Self Head-Restraining Platform, check out his poster at SFN this year! And Stop by our booth # 1502!
Abstract Citation
*J. G. ORLANDI1, S. GRZELKOWSKI2,1, M. ABDOLRAHMANI1, R. AOKI1, D. LYAMZIN1, A. BENUCCI1;
1Lab. for Neural Circuits and Behavior, RIKEN Ctr. for Brain Sci., Wakoshi, Japan; 2FNWI, Univ. van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Network interactions in the mouse visual cortex are predictive of perceptual decisions. Program No. 751.14. 2019 Neuroscience Meeting Planner. Chicago, IL: Society for Neuroscience, 2019. Online.