Project 3 - Interaction of attention and decision-making

Lead Investigator: Nathan Munet

Potential Treatments: Depression, addiction, schizophrenia, Parkinson's

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for a range of high-level cognitive functions, such as attention and decision-making. Studying these processes is difficult, since they are covert, dynamic and under the control of the subject, rather than the experimenter. Their measurement traditionally relies on inferring their presence via behavior. Recent technical advances, particularly the increase in the number of neurons that can be simultaneously recorded, has raised the possibility of decoding cognitive processes directly from neural activity.

In this project, we will capitalize on the recent development of high-density, high-channel count, silicon probes (Neuropixels) that can produce a more than 20-fold increase in neuronal-recording yield over conventional methods. We will use these new probes and decoding algorithms to identify the cellular and circuit-level mechanisms of attentional control and decision-making. We will perform this decoding in real-time and use the output to control the application of stimulus perturbations or electrical microstimulation, which will ‘close the loop’ and determine the necessity of the decoded signals for cognition. Finally, we will study the contribution of specific subpopulations of neurons by restricting the decoder to those populations.