Abstract:
Cognitive flexibility, or the ability to adapt our behavior to meet changing demands from the environment, is crucial for our survival. To make flexible decisions, the brain must detect changes in task context and in turn reorganize its activity patterns to flexibly combine different computations: selecting and processing relevant stimuli, remembering facts, setting goals. However, little is known about the circuit mechanisms implementing this in the brain. To tackle this, my lab uses a combination of decision-making tasks for mice making navigational decisions in virtual reality, optical tools to record and perturb neural dynamics on different spatial scales, genetic tools for circuit interrogation, and computational modeling. In my talk, I will give you a broad overview of our current and upcoming efforts to understand multiple facets of flexible decision making: 1) the role of cholinergic modulation in controlling task-specific dynamics across the cortex; 2) prefrontal microcircuit mechanisms of task switching; 3) the role of timescales over which mental operations unfold in determining how and when different areas of the cortex are recruited during decision making; 4) the circuit mechanisms that determine area-level intrinsic integration time constants; and 5) the development of a novel approach for functional mapping using spatiotemporally stochastic optogenetics
Emily Larsen
(312) 503-1687
Email