Neocortex-cerebellum Circuitry Unit

National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

This is the second year of operation of our lab. A substantial fraction of this period was spent expanding the lab's capabilities. We increased our staffing and team skillset. The lab now includes two visiting fellow postdoctoral researchers with critical engineering and physics backgrounds respectively; a Ph.D student in the Brown-NIH program; three postbac IRTAs; and a Hopkins bioinformatics masters student. The labs first cohort of posbac IRTAs successfully transitioned to MD and PhD programs at Columbia and UPenn. Technically, we acquired the components to design and build our second custom dual site two photon microscope with photostimulation, several additional custom behavioral devices for new learning paradigms, in vivo electrophysiological recording equipment, and in vivo optogenetics devices. We also initiated designs and acquisitions for future high speed volumetric imaging approaches. Scientifically, we completed the labs first project, presently under review. We obtained the first simultaneous recordings of the primary cerebellar inputs, climbing fibers and granule cells, during learning. This unexpectedly demonstrated signals that can support a new type of cerebellar computation to track the passage of time while awaiting an upcoming reward. We have also made significant progress on a study of the relationship between cerebellar reward anticipation signaling and broader brain reward signaling. This work will more definitively link cerebellar reward signals to classical brain reward processing frameworks. Third, we have made technical progress toward a multisite two photon imaging and optogenetics approach to chronically probe causal interactions in cortico-cerebellar networks. Fourth, we are beginning a comparison of task-switching dynamics during learning in cortex and cerebellum.