MDC Neuroscience Seminar

Speaker: Carl Petersen (Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland)

Title: Neural dynamics across goal-directed sensorimotor learning

Abstract:  Animals can rapidly learn to associate specific sensory information with reward availability contingent on the execution of specific actions, but how this happens at the neuronal level is largely unknown. Here, I will discuss a simple behavior in which thirsty head-restrained mice learn to lick for water reward in response to a single brief tactile stimulus. In this task learning takes place across a single session, allowing direct correlation of learning with changes in neuronal activity. We find evidence for plastic sensory representations in the primary somatosensory cortex accompanied by prominent spontaneous reactivations of patterned neuronal activity. In ongoing work, we have begun to study brain wide activity patterns across learning through multiple simultaneous Neuropixels recordings, which we are now analysing in detail.