The Role of Serotonin in the Modulation of Multisensory Spatial Attention

血清素在多感官空间注意力调节中的作用

• 批准号: MR/X010805/1
• 负责人: Maria Iacaruso
• 金额: $ 60.54万
• 依托单位: The Francis Crick Institute
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FX010805%2F1
• 关键词: Role; Serotonin; Modulation; Multisensory; Spatial

Attention improves perceptual abilities by modulating sensory processing. The superior colliculus is a brain region involved in directing attention on a reflexive manner by guiding orienting behaviours towards or away from salient stimuli. Serotonin is a chemical naturally produced by the brain that can modulate how sensory information is perceived by our sensory organs according to behavioural context, via suppressing sensory information irrelevant to the ongoing behaviour. We have recently developed a behavioural task that requires mice to report the location of a salient auditory or visual stimulus. While the performance of the mice depends primarily on the saliency of the stimulus, their behaviour is also modulated by contextual information. Mice perform the task in blocks where only one modality is rewarded, such that they need to switch attention between auditory and visual information to obtain a reward. This task allows us to assess the role of the SC in spatial reflexive attention and how this process is modulated by serotonin in a context dependent manner, when only one of the sensory modalities is relevant for the task. In this project we aim to study how serotonin modulates attention through the activation of different receptors. The malfunction of different serotonin receptor types has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several neurological disorders, highlighting the importance of studying how serotonin receptors mediate attentional processes in the healthy brain. Our project will work on multiple scales, such that serotonin action is characterised at the level of single nerve cells, across multiple brain areas and in individual organisms. Our approach to target individual receptors in specific brain regions will enable us to minimise animal numbers while generating a complete and detailed model of serotonin function. This project will allow us to uncover new targets for drugs to treat various types of neurological disorders that affect millions of people in the UK and worldwide.

注意力通过调节感觉处理来提高感知能力。上丘是一个大脑区域，通过引导行为朝向或远离显着刺激，以反射方式引导注意力。血清素是大脑自然产生的一种化学物质，可以通过抑制与正在进行的行为无关的感觉信息来调节我们的感觉器官根据行为背景感知感觉信息的方式。我们最近开发了一项行为任务，要求小鼠报告显着听觉或视觉刺激的位置。虽然小鼠的表现主要取决于刺激的显着性，但它们的行为也受到上下文信息的调节。小鼠在只获得一种形式奖励的块中执行任务，因此它们需要在听觉和视觉信息之间切换注意力才能获得奖励。这项任务使我们能够评估 SC 在空间反射性注意力中的作用，以及当只有一种感觉方式与任务相关时，血清素如何以上下文相关的方式调节这一过程。在这个项目中，我们的目标是研究血清素如何通过激活不同的受体来调节注意力。不同血清素受体类型的功能障碍与多种神经系统疾病的发病机制有关，这凸显了研究血清素受体如何介导健康大脑注意力过程的重要性。我们的项目将在多个尺度上开展工作，以便在单个神经细胞水平、跨多个大脑区域和个体生物体中表征血清素的作用。我们针对特定大脑区域的个体受体的方法将使我们能够最大限度地减少动物数量，同时生成完整而详细的血清素功能模型。该项目将使我们能够发现药物的新靶标，以治疗影响英国和全世界数百万人的各种类型的神经系统疾病。