CANCELED - Neural Circuit Dynamics During Virtual Navigation

Neuroscience Seminar Series Dr. Tank Lab’s current focus is on persistent neural activity, a form of neural circuit dynamics that is associated with short-term memory. Persistent neural activity is a sustained increase or suppression of action potential firing elicited by a brief sensory stimulus or motor command. Across the population of participating neurons, the pattern of sustained changes in action potential firing is correlated with the information held in short term memory, while disruption of persistent activity produces deficits in memory-guided behavior. These characteristics suggest that the memory is actually the dynamic state of the circuit. Originally described in the frontal cortex of awake behaving primates during behaviors requiring short term retention of a sensory stimulus, persistent neural activity has also been observed in subcortical brain areas, such as the basal ganglia, superior colliculus, and brainstem. It has been observed not only in primates, but also in the thalamus, hippocampus, and midbrain of rodents as well as the brainstem of non-mammalian vertebrates. This wide diversity of brain areas and species motivates the idea that persistent neural activity may indeed represent a very general form of brain dynamics, perhaps as fundamental to neural circuits as the action potential is to single neuron dynamics. They study the mechanisms of persistent neural activity in experimental preparations that allow advanced electrophysiological, imaging,...
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