Project description DEENESFRITPL Unraveling fish brains with in vivo optical imaging and advanced mathematical modelling Understanding the behaviour of organisms like ourselves that integrate environmental cues and neural stimuli with cognitive processing is a very complex task. Harnessing the power of simple-model organisms such as the zebrafish together with the power of computational analytical methods could enable the characterisation of complex brain-body-environment interactions in living organisms. Zebrafish share many major organs and tissues with humans, and larval zebrafish are optically transparent, facilitating the in vivo imaging of calcium dynamics during nervous system activation. The EU-funded DIMENSIVE project is recording the neural activity of behaving zebrafish and using the data to develop generative models of large-scale behaviour. The advanced statistical models will allow scientists to create new data instances, providing important insight into how behaviour arises from the dynamical interaction of an organism’s nervous system, body and environment. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective A major challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to understand how behaviour arises from the dynamical interaction of an organism’s nervous system, its body, and its environment. Understanding embodied neural activity involves the resolution of various conceptual, technical and methodological issues in explaining how living organisms self-organize at many levels (from neural bio-chemistry to behaviour and learning). Currently, two important obstacles hinder this endeavour: the difficulties in recording neural activity in behaving animals, and the lack of mathematical tools to characterize the complex brain-body-environment interactions in living organisms. In this project we will address current limits by implementing an interdisciplinary combination of novel animal behaviour neuroimaging setups and large-scale statistical methods, with the goal of recording and modelling whole-brain activity of locomoting vertebrates. We will study fictively swimming larval zebrafish during active behaviour in a pioneering experimental setup, recording neural activity utilizing light-sheet microscopy for calcium imaging in different virtual reality scenarios involving sensorimotor manipulations. In this setup, we will collect data from the distributed neural circuits that integrate sensory signals from the environment (exafferent input) and their own movements (reafferent input), as well as plastic processes of habituation to new sensorimotor contingencies. From this data, we will infer large-scale generative models (i.e. models capable of yielding synthetic data resembling the studied phenomena) of embodied neural circuits by complementing dynamical models and techniques from statistical mechanics with innovative information theoretic and Bayesian inference methods and approximations for very large systems in non-equilibrium and non-stationary conditions. Fields of science natural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiologycognitive neurosciencenatural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsstatistics and probabilitybayesian statisticsnatural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsstatistical mechanicsnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationsvirtual realitynatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesethology Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2019 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2019 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX Net EU contribution € 212 933,76 Address SUSSEX HOUSE FALMER BN1 9RH Brighton United Kingdom See on map Region South East (England) Surrey, East and West Sussex Brighton and Hove Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 212 933,76
