Investigation of brain-wide connectivity and cortical population codes for long-term memory

Memories are thought to be stored as traces distributed across the brain. How these memory traces are coordinated is a fundamental unsolved problem. This project aims to address this problem by investigating outputs from a brain structure called the entorhinal cortex (EC). This structure is of great interest as it receives signals from the hippocampus, which is important for initial learning, and sends outputs to diverse cortical targets that together are important for long-term memory. The proposed project involves carrying out experiments in rodents using advanced genetic and physiological methods to establish organising principles by which the entorhinal cortex coordinates neural activity within and between cortical regions.

What transformations do cortical networks undergo as memories are formed? What is the role of the entorhinal cortex in coordinating these cortical network changes? To answer these questions we will first establish the principles with which neurons in EC distributes information to the neocortex. For this we will use a novel sequencing based high-throughput single cell projection analysis technique, MAPseq (Kebschull et al., 2016).These experiments will generate very large and rich datasets, which will help unravel the fundamental principles of the neural basis of memory. Moreover, the results will enable constructing new models of short and long-term memory acquisition that can advance artificial neural networks used in machine learning applications.