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Animals are believed to act in a purposive manner in order to survive. Purposive actions can be described as behaviors performed to receive rewards such as nutrition, or avoid unpleasant situations. We are using small rodents (mice) to investigate the brain mechanisms necessary for learning purposive actions. Specifically, through multiple simultaneous recordings of neural activity, we aim to investigate the presence of cell populations associated with behaviors and stimuli, create neural circuit models, and elucidate their operating principles. During this process, optogenetics technology makes it possible to stimulate or inhibit the activity of a specific neuronal population at a time resolution of one second or less. We are currently testing hypotheses related to neural circuit models and their role in behavior, given evidence that artificially altering neural activity also alters the activity of neural populations and, by extension, the behavior of mice.

Keywords

Decision-making, neural circuit models, electrophysiology, reinforcement learning, imaging, optogenetics

links

・Laboratory website ・Activity Database on Education and Research, Kyoto University ・researchmap