For the first time, a team of neuroscientists from Columbia University have controlled a visual behavior of a mouse by activating a few neurons in its visual cortex.
For the first time, a team of neuroscientists from Columbia University have controlled a visual behavior of a mouse by activating a few neurons in its visual cortex.
In their study, published in Cell, the researchers demonstrated that specific groups of neurons, known as neuronal ensembles, have a causal role in behavior. The researchers used new optical and analytical tools to identify cortical ensembles in mice while they performed a visual task. They also used high-resolution optogenetics to simultaneously target selected neurons with single-cell precision, taking control of the mice’s behavior. While the precise activation of neurons related to the task improved the performance of the animal, the activation of other neurons, not related to the task, degraded the behavior.
“This is the most exciting work to come out of my laboratory in decades since we are proving that cortical ensembles are key for behavior and that we can play the piano with them and alter at will the behavioral performance of animals,” said Rafael Yuste, the senior author of the study and professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia. “The data indicates, moreover, that neuronal ensembles are internal representations of a visual stimulus,” added Yuste, who is also a member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia.
Read more at Data Science Institute at Columbia
