Interrogating the Dynamic Neural Computation of the Sense of Direction

质疑方向感的动态神经计算

基本信息

批准号：
10752171
负责人：
Oliver Riley Stanley
金额：
$ 4.77万
依托单位：
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2023
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2023-05-15 至 2025-05-14
项目状态：
未结题

项目摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Navigating dynamic environments to avoid danger and locate the necessities of life relies critically on animals keeping track of their own position and heading within the world, which cannot be sensed directly but instead must be inferred by integrating many streams of information, including vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual. Because directional heading has a straightforward mathematical definition (i.e., horizon and azimuth angles), the sense of direction represents fertile ground for quantitative study of multisensory integration and population coding in numerous areas of the brain. In particular, electrophysiological experiments studying the brain's representation of the body's spatial relationship to the environment have described a class of neurons referred to as head direction (HD) cells, which each fire when an animal is facing a specific preferred direction. The prevailing model for the generation of the signal encoded by these cells assumes that information about angular head velocity from the vestibular system drives activity changes in reciprocally-connected brainstem areas, the dorsal tegmental and lateral mammillary nuclei. These areas are modeled as a ring attractor network, which can maintain a stable pattern of activity due to excitatory connections between neurons with similar preferred directions and inhibition between neurons with opposing preferred directions. However, the main projection from the vestibular nuclei to the network of brain areas containing HD cells is via the nucleus prepositus, which principally encodes eye-related rather than head-related information. Thus, it seems likely that eye-related information plays a substantial role in the generation of the HD signal. The summation of head-in-world direction with eye-in-head direction defines gaze direction. We thus hypothesize that the "head direction" network in actuality primarily encodes gaze direction. In order to investigate this hypothesis, I will record from multiple points of the HD network in rhesus macaques during both passive motion and active locomotion using high-density neural probes while simultaneously tracking eye, body, and head movements. By analyzing eye, head, and limb movements in conjunction with recordings from the HD system at multiple stages of information processing, and in particular by recording from large numbers of neurons at multiple locations simultaneously, this project will provide new insights into fundamental questions about how the brain represents the world and the body's relationship to it.

项目摘要 /摘要导航动态环境以避免危险并定位生命的必要性跟踪自己的位置并在世界内部，而不能直接感知，而是必须通过整合许多信息流来推断，包括前庭，本体感受和视觉。因为定向标题具有直接的数学定义（即地平线和方位角），所以方向感代表了多感觉整合和人口的定量研究的肥沃基础在大脑的许多区域进行编码。特别是，研究大脑对人体空间的表示的电生理实验与环境的关系描述了一类称为头方向（HD）细胞的神经元，当动物面对特定的首选方向时，每次火灾。一代的盛行模型这些单元编码的信号假定前庭的有关角头速度的信息系统驱动活动变化的活动变化在相互连接的脑干区域，背侧和侧面乳腺核。这些区域被建模为环网网络，可以保持稳定的图案由于具有相似优选方向和抑制的神经元之间的兴奋性连接而引起的活动在具有相反方向的神经元之间。但是，前庭核的主要投影含有HD细胞的大脑区域网络是通过核核的，该核主要编码与眼睛有关的信息而不是与头部有关的信息。因此，与眼有关的信息似乎播放在HD信号的产生中的重要作用。用目光方向的头部方向的总和定义了凝视方向。我们这样假设实际上“头部方向”网络主要编码凝视方向。为了调查这一假设，我将在恒河猕猴中的高清网络的多个点记录使用高密度神经探针的被动运动和主动运动，同时跟踪眼睛，身体和头部运动。通过分析眼睛，头部和肢体运动与录音在多个信息处理的多个阶段的高清系统，尤其是通过大量记录在多个位置的神经元同时，该项目将提供有关基本的新见解关于大脑如何代表世界及其人体与世界的关系的问题。