We conceived and build an innovative setup for wireless recordings, the “NeuroEthoRoom” (NER), to simultaneously study non-human primates (NHPs) behavior and brain activity during unconstrained situations. The NER is a large transparent enclosure in which up to two animals can freely move, monitored by a system of multiple cameras, enabling to track their position and body movements, simultaneously with wirelessly recorded neuronal activity. Two pairs of macaque monkeys participated in the project, being trained to 1) perform a set of classical visuomotor tasks in head-restrained and head-free situations (including a “social interaction task”) and 2) enter in the NER, with positive reinforcement techniques .
We could automatically track the monkey’s position during natural behaviors in multiple sessions within the NER. We could also extract information about head rotation, roll and pitch. We recorded two animals in both the chair and NER conditions, and the other two in the chair with both head-fixed and head-free conditions, collecting data on a variety of motor behaviour, space coding, and a variety of unconstrained behviours based on wirelessly recorded neuronal activity during freely-moving sessions.
In parallel, we developed and tested new solution for neural recordings and stimulation, in state-of-the-art laboratory conditions. These studies yielded important technical validation data for innovative multi-site recording and stimulation devices. We also demonstrated, with recordings in classical chair settings, various neural mechanisms, hypothesized in the project, concerning the neural bases of other’s observed action processing in the cortical motor system, action organization, and context-based prediction of others’ behavior during social interaction.
These findings have been presented in, so far, in 15 papers published in peer-reviewed international journals and about 12 international conference abstracts (further 3 paper are in preparation and 1 is under second round of revisions).
In sum, despite the difficulties and delays imposed by the pandemic situation, and thanks to the 6 month of extension obtained for the project, we have been able to achieve all the main scientific results in terms of data collection and we are finalizing the publication of some additional important papers the directly derive from the project activities.
Existing, interdisciplinary collaboration of the PI have been consolidated during this period; several PhD students and research fellows have been enrolled, one researchers have got a tenure-track position and other two a position as a fixed-term researchers (at Unipr and Unito). Thus, the project has strongly supported training and initial stage of career of future independent researchers.
