High resolution imaging of cortical activity during memory formation and recall
Abstract
We propose to use a unique new imaging technology and state-of-art electrical probes to record activity from up to 20,000 individual neurons over one hemisphere of mouse cortex, together with close to 500 neurons from the underlying hippocampus, in order to study long-standing questions about how memories are constructed, how they are represented in cortical networks, and how they are recalled. These studies will shed light on how neural activity in the hippocampus sculpts cortical circuits linking sub-networks across widely separated cortical areas to represent diverse aspects of a single experience. They will also elucidate how familiar cues reactivate representations of aspects of an experience that are not present in the current situation. Memory is inherently integrative, linking diverse aspects of a single experience, which are represented by activity in sub-networks across many areas of cortex. Current technologies, which typically record from one region, or at most two, are insufficient to investigate the communication across many different brain regions. Recording from sub-networks in many regions thus has the potential to transform our understanding of how the brain forms episodic memories. Furthermore, these recordings will capture activity of the same neurons across the different stages of memory formation or retrieval, thus revealing how the representations in different brain regions, and their coordination, change over time. Our results may be used to inform the development of advanced machine learning methods, a priority for the Department of Defense. In particular, our studies will elucidate an alternative to the powerful transformer architecture to achieve context-dependent learning.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 06, 2024
- Source ID
- FA95502310364
Entities
People
- Mark Reimers
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Michigan State University
- United States Air Force