Neural coding of natural stimuli in freely moving macaque

自由移动猕猴自然刺激的神经编码

基本信息

批准号：
10524592
负责人：
VALENTIN DRAGOI
金额：
$ 22.94万
依托单位：
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2022-07-15 至 2023-09-15
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10524592
关键词：
Animal Behavior Animals Area Behavior Brain Cells Chronic Code Complex Data Decision Making Dependence Dorsal Environment Event Exploratory Behavior Eye Eye Movements Goals Head Image Implant Individual Inferior Knowledge Laboratories Life Location Locomotion Macaca Medical Mental Health Methodology Monitor Monkeys Neurons Neurosciences Pathway Analysis Perception Physical environment Population Positioning Attribute Prefrontal Cortex Property Prosthesis Pupil Research Sensory Stimulus System Techniques Technology Temporal Lobe Three-Dimensional Image Time Utah Vision Visual Visual Cortex Visual Perception Visual system structure Wakefulness Walking area V1 area V4 base brain dysfunction computer monitor cortical visual impairment design extrastriate visual cortex feasibility testing free behavior gaze improved innovation insight interest large datasets microelectronics neural network nonhuman primate novel novel strategies oculomotor portability prevent relating to nervous system response retinotopic sample fixation visual coding visual cognition visual neuroscience visual stimulus visual tracking wireless

项目摘要

Despite the fact that visual perception represents such a fundamental aspect of our everyday life, our knowledge of the underlying neural coding of natural stimuli is woefully lacking. One major limitation preventing our understanding of the neural underpinnings of natural vision is the lack of viable methodologies for recording and synchronizing eye movements and incoming visual stimuli from freely-moving monkeys during unrestrained exploratory behavior. Indeed, examining the neural bases of visual perception has been traditionally performed by studying the brain of nonhuman primates in a laboratory environment in which the head and body are restrained while synthetic stimuli are presented on a computer monitor. However, it has become increasingly clear that studying the brain in spatially confined, artificial laboratory rigs poses severe limits on our capacity to understand the function of brain circuits. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel approach by designing an integrated wireless eye tracking system to precisely record naturally-occurring eye movements and retinotopic visual inputs throughout unstructured, freely-moving behavior in conjunction with massive, wireless electrical recordings of population activity across four cortical areas. Our novel system will be used to study the visual coding and brain state-dependence of cortical dynamics during natural visual exploration by recording population activity in multiple visual, temporal, and frontal cortical areas while nonhuman primates are interacting with their environment. We will focus on the sparseness of the population response, the real-time encoding of natural scenes, and spatial position dependency of stimulus coding. We hypothesize that the sparse coding of natural stimuli during free viewing improves the accuracy with which neural populations encode stimuli across the visual cortical hierarchy. Our proposed research will constitute a paradigm shift by moving visual neuroscience - from simply observing animal behavior and recording the responses of single cells - to a quantitative understanding of the distributed neuronal network encoding during task-free behavior in freely moving nonhuman primates interacting with their physical environment. We anticipate that the large quantity of neural data recorded using our approach will be of great interest to clinicians and computational neuroscientists studying general properties of normal and dysfunctional neural networks, possibly leading to medical insights into cortical visual impairments and innovations in cortical prosthetics for restoring natural visual functions.

尽管视觉感知代表了我们日常生活的一个基本方面，但我们的知识令人遗憾的是，我们缺乏对自然刺激的潜在神经编码的了解。阻碍我们的一个主要限制对自然视觉神经基础的理解是缺乏可行的记录和观察方法在不受限制的情况下，同步眼球运动和来自自由移动的猴子的传入视觉刺激探索行为。事实上，传统上一直在检查视觉感知的神经基础通过在实验室环境中研究非人类灵长类动物的大脑，其中头部和身体处于当合成刺激出现在计算机显示器上时受到限制。然而，它已经变得越来越显然，在空间有限的人工实验室设备中研究大脑严重限制了我们的能力了解大脑回路的功能。为了克服这些限制，我们提出了一种新方法设计一个集成的无线眼动追踪系统来精确记录自然发生的眼球运动视网膜专题视觉输入贯穿于非结构化、自由移动的行为以及大规模、无线四个皮质区域的人口活动的电子记录。我们的新颖系统将用于研究通过记录进行自然视觉探索期间的视觉编码和皮质动力学的大脑状态依赖性非人类灵长类动物相互作用时，多个视觉、颞叶和额叶皮层区域的种群活动与他们的环境。我们将重点关注人口响应的稀疏性、实时编码自然场景和刺激编码的空间位置依赖性。我们假设稀疏编码自由观看期间的自然刺激提高了神经群体编码刺激的准确性视觉皮层层次结构。我们提出的研究将通过移动视觉来构成范式转变神经科学——从简单地观察动物行为和记录单个细胞的反应——到自由地无任务行为期间分布式神经元网络编码的定量理解移动的非人类灵长类动物与其物理环境相互作用。我们预计大量的使用我们的方法记录的神经数据将引起临床医生和计算神经科学家的极大兴趣研究正常和功能失调的神经网络的一般特性，可能带来医学见解深入研究皮质视觉障碍和皮质修复术的创新，以恢复自然视觉功能。