Neural activity in the auditory cortex of behaving, freely-moving rats
We recorded neural activity in the brains of freely-moving rats while they performed behavioral tasks for food reward. Neuronal responses to sounds depended strongly on the behavioral state: responses during behavior had more task-relevant information than responses during passive listening. Surprisingly, we also observed slow firing rate modulations that were task-related, not associated with sounds, and substantially larger than the sound-evoked responses. Modeling suggests that the large task-related rate modulations shape sound-driven responses during behavior. I will describe approaches for analyzing the fine-grained behavior of the animals and for deriving hypotheses about the nature of non-auditory, task-related activity.
Date: 22 February 2024, 16:00 (Thursday, 6th week, Hilary 2024)
Venue: Sherrington Library, off Parks Road OX1 3PT
Venue Details: Sherrington Building
Speaker: Eli Nelken (Hebrew University, Israel)
Organiser: Professor Andrew King (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: andrew.king@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Andrew King (University of Oxford)
Part of: Neuroscience Theme Guest Speakers (DPAG)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Hannah Simm