Integrated Calendar

TBA

The work in our lab focuses on understanding the neural basis of spatial memory and spatial cognition – using bats as our animal model. In my talk I will describe some of our recent studies, including: (i) How does the brain represent positions and directions in 3D ? A set of studies in bats revealed that 3D positions are represented isotropically. 3D head-directions are represented in toroidal, rather than spherical 3D coordinates – allowing the brain to solve the discontinuity and non-commutativity problems of 3D directions. (ii) How are goal positions represented in the brain ? I will describe a new kind of vectorial representation of goals that we found in the bat hippocampal formation. (iii) I will also describe ongoing work towards elucidating the hippocampal neural codes in realistic, kilometer-scale environments. Our long-term vision is to develop a "Natural Neuroscience" approach for studying the neural basis of behavior – tapping into the animal's natural behaviors in complex, large-scale, naturalistic settings.

Striatal disinhibition leads to spontaneous abnormal action release manifesting as motor tics, resembling those expressed in Tourette syndrome patients. We utilized microstimulation within the motor cortex of freely-behaving rats before and after striatal disinhibition to study the spatial and temporal properties of tic expression. The spatial properties of these tics were dependent on the striatal organization while the temporal properties were dependent on the cortico-striatal activity. A data-driven computational model of cortico-striatal function closely replicated the temporal properties of abnormal action release. These converging experimental and computational findings suggest a clear functional dichotomy within the cortico-striatal network, pointing to disparate temporal (cortical) vs. spatial (striatal) encoding of action release.