The M-GATE project has recruited 14 ESRs, all enrolled in PhD programs at their host institutions. Three of them had purely computational projects, while the remaining 11 had experimental projects. The main focus of the experimental work was the exploration of the neural circuits in the hippocampus and connected brain structures, and their relationship with cognition and behavior, with special emphasis on memory. Most of the work required high-resolution, advanced invasive techniques that can only be applied to animal models (rats and mice), except for one student who worked on a cognitive neuroscience project on humans using functional neuroimaging and computational methods. The questions, approaches, in this project were as close as possible to those other fellows applied to animals so that we could transfer some of the knowledge acquired with detailed work in the animal model to humans.
All experimental students received training in their respective technique, involving electrophysiology, that is, the recording of the electrical activity of many neurons as well as optical imaging, where neural activity is monitored via fluorescent indicators that are inserted in neurons with genetic methods.
All projects attained significant advances of our understanding of the neural basis of memory, from the level of single neurons, to the level of global brain networks. To cite just a few examples, in the hippocampus and other cortical areas involved in memory, such as the anterior cingulate cortex, we shed light on how information is encoded in the timing of neural impulses, and how different types of neuronal cells contribute to the information encoding process.
At a very different level of analysis, we looked at the activation of brain areas or the brain as a whole, and we discovered new laws of interaction (for example between the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex during sleep), and we developed new mathematical methods to characterize the brain "state" (a very complex complex and multi-dimensional entity) in terms of a few dimensions that are relevant for brain dynamics and information processing. We have applied these methods to the healthy and the epileptic brain, generating a new way to classify epileptic seizures. Epileptic-like activity was also studied in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease,
In humans, we have identified the brain circuit supporting the planning of sophisticated actions such as routes through a city like London.
The theoretical work has provided a computational framework to understand our data, with a good collaboration between theoretical and experimental fellows. Notably, we devised a scaling law for the behavior of human memory capacity, derived from first principles of statistics and statistical physics, which fits experimental data very well.
Furthermore, we calculated quantitative estimates of the information that may be stored in neural networks exhibiting the well-known "grid" response pattern, observed in the medial entorhinal cortex, keeping the details of hippocampal anatomy into account.
In addition to the research and training that all ESRs received at their host institutions, training events featuring world class speakers and instructors from within and from outside the network were organized in Trieste (Italy), Nijmegen (Netherlands), Tromso (Norway) and Rehovot (Israel). The Trieste and Tromso events – the latter in collaboration with the Norwegian Neuroscience Society – also had a public component and were open to students from outside the network. During the COVID pandemics, training and networking continued online. Despite the delays that some ESRs encountered as a result of the COVID pandemic, the M-GATE project generated 18 publications as well as 10 manuscripts already submitted for review and some 17 manuscripts in preparation, 5 ESRs have already obtained their PhD degree, 7 ESRs will complete their PhD this year and another 2 ESRs are scheduled to defend their PhD thesis in 2023.
