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SUMMARY:Vision\, Decision\, and Navigation in Mouse Parietal Cortex - Prof
 essor Matteo Carandini\, University College London
DTSTART:20170203T163000Z
DTEND:20170203T180000Z
UID:TALK69970@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Louise White
DESCRIPTION:Many tasks in daily life involve a combination of perceptual d
 ecisions and navigation. Rodent parietal cortex has been implicated in bot
 h of these processes\, with some studies focusing on its role in decisions
  and others on its role in navigation.  Here we show that\, when mice use 
 vision to decide where to navigate\, parietal cortex robustly encodes navi
 gational\, rather than perceptual or decision-related information. We trai
 ned mice in a two-alternative forced choice task\, which required them to 
 navigate in a virtual T-shaped corridor in which the correct choice was si
 gnaled by visual contrast on the corridor walls. 2-photon calcium imaging 
 revealed that neurons in parietal cortex coded for combinations of the ani
 mal's position and heading direction in the virtual room\, and their respo
 nses were highly predictable based on these measures. Different neurons ex
 hibited diverse heading-position tuning\, so the population as a whole cou
 ld be readily decoded to predict the mouse’s navigation paths in single 
 trials. The neurons were also informative about the mouse’s choice\, but
  the choice could be easily predicted from heading-position trajectories o
 f the mouse through the room.  Spatial coding in parietal cortex required 
 active navigation\, not just vision: during playback of previous navigatio
 n scenes to passive mice\, activity in visual cortex matched that during a
 ctive behavior\, but activity in parietal cortex did not. We conclude that
  when mice use visual information to guide navigation\, parietal cortex en
 codes spatial factors rather than visual information or abstract decisions
 . These spatial factors involve precise combinations of spatial position a
 nd direction of heading. \n\n \n\nMatteo Carandini is the GlaxoSmithKline 
 / Fight for Sight Professor of Visual Neuroscience at University College L
 ondon\, where together with Kenneth Harris he co-directs the Cortical Proc
 essing Laboratory (www.ucl.ac.uk/cortexlab).  Before joining UCL in 2007\,
  he ran laboratories at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San
  Francisco (2002) and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zuri
 ch (1998). He holds a Laurea in Mathematics from the University of Rome (1
 990) and a PhD in Neural Science from New York University (1996). The aim 
 of his research is to understand the computations performed by neuronal po
 pulations in the visual system and beyond\, the underlying circuits\, and 
 the way these computations lead to decisions and actions. He addresses the
 se questions in mice that perform sensory and navigation tasks. Carandini 
 is a McKnight Scholar (2005)\, a European Research Council Advanced Invest
 igator (2007)\, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator (2012)\, and a Simons
  Investigator (2014).
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology
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