Neuronal Information through Neuronal Interactions

Informazioni relative al progetto

NINI

ID dell’accordo di sovvenzione: 864491

DOI

10.3030/864491

Progetto chiuso

Data della firma CE 27 Febbraio 2020

Data di avvio 1 Luglio 2020

Data di completamento 30 Giugno 2026

Finanziato da

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Costo totale

€ 1 999 375,00

Contributo UE

€ 1 999 375,00

Coordinato da

EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITAET TUEBINGEN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NINI (Neuronal Information through Neuronal Interactions)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-07-01 al 2024-12-31

Sintesi del contesto e degli obiettivi generali del progetto

Our thoughts and actions result from the activity of functionally specialized neurons in the brain. We have learned a lot about how individual neurons encode information about our environment, thoughts and actions. But we lack understanding of how this information comes about. How does this information results from the dense local interactions among neurons within brain regions as well as from the large-scale interactions across different brain regions? Answering this question is not only key to understanding the neural underpinnings of our thoughts and actions but also provides the basis for a mechanistic understanding of disturbances of neural information processing in the diseased brain. The key objective of this project is to address this question and to directly investigate which neuronal interactions establish information coding.

Lavoro eseguito dall’inizio del progetto fino alla fine del periodo coperto dalla relazione e principali risultati finora ottenuti

We employed an interdisciplinary approach that tightly integrates human and animal electrophysiology. This approach combines non-invasive measurements of neuronal population activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and encephalography (EEG) with intra-cortical recordings of the activity of individual neurons. On the one hand, this approach allowed us to characterize various types of neural information from low level sensory, to cognitive and motor information at the population and cellular level. On the other hand, this allowed us to identify and characterize neuronal interactions within and between brain regions. Furthermore, based on this approach we identified several relations between different types of local and large-scale neuronal interactions and the encoding of neural information. Together, our results suggest that specific local and large-scale neuronal interactions play a fundamental role for the encoding of neural information in local and large-scale brain networks.

Progressi oltre lo stato dell’arte e potenziale impatto previsto (incluso l’impatto socioeconomico e le implicazioni sociali più ampie del progetto fino ad ora)

We developed several novel experimental and analytical approaches, based on which we expect to identify and characterize specific local and large-scale neuronal interactions that underlie neuronal information coding.