Janelle Pakan: From sensation to action: experience-dependent cortical plasticity during task engagement
| When |
Jun 14, 2022
from 05:15 PM to 06:00 PM |
|---|---|
| Where | Hybrid Format, Bernstein Center, Lecture Hall. Meeting ID and password will be sent with e-mail invitation. You can also contact Fiona Siegfried for Meeting ID and password. |
| Contact Name | Fiona Siegfried |
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Abstract
We are constantly learning from our experiences as we engage with the world around us. During this active learning our senses work together to build an external reality, which is also influenced by our ongoing behaviours. This multimodal engagement across sensory and motor circuits results in experience-dependent plasticity and may lead to more efficient learning – when we are driving a car and are engaged in the task of navigating, we very often remember the route much better than as a passive passenger. A major challenge in modern neuroscience is to elucidate how sensory and behavioural systems integrate and influence each other across distributed brain networks. How does contextual sensory stimulation transform to behavioural output and how does our behavioural output subsequently feedback to affect fundamental sensory processing?
A vital step in understanding the functional principles of these neural circuits is to directly observe the activity of local circuit elements with high temporal and spatial resolution during sensation and action. To do this, we use advanced in vivo two-photon microscopy in combination with virtual environments to examine principles of cortical plasticity in sensory and association brain regions across different levels of task engagement in behaving mice. The overarching aim is to disentangle how sensory and motor systems function together in the dynamic complexity of the ‘real-world’ and how neuronal representations adapt across learning.
