Projektbeschreibung
Komplexe kognitive Prozesse und die Rolle von Schaltkreisen im Gehirn
Der Mensch kann frühere Erfahrungen und Reize mit bestimmten Situationen in Verbindung bringen, um sich auf dieser Grundlage besser an Veränderungen der Umwelt anzupassen. Auch kommende Ereignisse kann er dadurch vorhersagen. Doch die Mechanismen, die an Kodierung und Speicherung dieser komplexen kognitiven Prozesse beteiligt sind, konnten noch nicht vollständig durchdrungen werden. Das EU-finanzierte Projekt HighMemory will die Rolle von Hippocampus und Hirnrinde bei höherrangigen Konditionierungsprozessen analysieren und setzt dazu genetische und pharmakologische Methoden sowie Techniken der Bildgebung und Verhaltensforschung ein. Die Ergebnisse werden die Regulierung von komplexem kognitivem Verhalten nachvollziehbar machen und eine partielle Erklärung dafür liefern, warum bestimmte Reize abstoßend oder anziehend wirken, obwohl sie vorher nie mit negativen oder positiven Folgen in Verbindung gebracht worden sind.
Ziel
Animals and humans adapt to changes in the environment through the encoding and storage of previous experiences. Although associative learning involving a reinforcer has been the major focus in the field of cognition, other forms of learning are gaining popularity as they are likely more relevant and frequent in human daily choices. Indeed, associations between non-reinforcing stimuli represent the most evolutionarily advanced way to increase the chances of predicting future events and adapting individuals’ behavior. Animals are also able to form these higher-order conditioning processes, but more research is needed to understand how the brain encode and store these complex cognitive processes. In this project, I propose to study the role of hippocampo-cortical circuits in higher-order conditioning processes. These processes explain why subjects are often repulsed or attracted by stimuli, which do not have intrinsic repellent or appealing value and they were never explicitly paired with negative or positive outcomes. A proposed explanation of these “ungrounded” aversion or attraction is that these stimuli were incidentally associated with other cues directly reinforced, through a process called mediated learning (ML). However, with increased incidental associations, the subjects acquire more information, allowing them to separate the real saliences of the different stimuli. Therefore, ML evolves into “reality testing”(RT), a behavioral process that has been even less studied. These processes involve multiple brain regions and are characterized by accessible phases, making them perfect models to study the circuit-level regulation of complex behavior. By using genetic, pharmacological, imaging and mouse behavioral approaches (sensory preconditioning), HighMemory proposes to characterize at macro- (brain regions), meso- (cell-types) and micro-scale (activity changes), the causal involvement of hippocampo-cortical projections in higher-order conditioning processes.
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
Schlüsselbegriffe
Programm/Programme
Thema/Themen
Finanzierungsplan
ERC-STG - Starting GrantGastgebende Einrichtung
08003 Barcelona
Spanien