2016 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report

Optogenetic countrol of visual perception

Research Project

Project/Area Number	26290011
Research Institution	Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
Principal Investigator	ベヌッチアンドレア国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 脳科学総合研究センター, チームリーダー (50722352)
Project Period (FY)	2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
Keywords	Vision / animal cognition / decision making / optogenetics / fluorescent imaging / visual cortex / cortical plasticity
Outline of Annual Research Achievements	Progress on animal behavior: the behavioral setups for automated behavioral training of mice, with voluntary head-fixation have been augmented in high-throughput capacity, now training 50 animals/day. They have successfully allowed the collection of publishable behavioral data (manuscript under peer-review).Thanks to these setups we have trained animals in two visual-based discrimination tasks as part of ongoing projects aiming to examine the neural basis of animal’s decision-making, an important cognitive function for adaptive behaviors in complex environments. Progress on neural recordings: last year’s preliminary work on calcium imaging recordings in the visual cortex of mice during optogenetic manipulations, has now matured to a publishable research project. Findings in such work have revealed that functional plasticity in recurrent neuronal networks can be induced solely by the activity of one or a very few neurons, and it can dramatically alter the stimulus selectivity of the whole network in a functionally predictable way, even outside juvenile developmental periods, in the cortex of adult animals. A manuscript summarizing these findings is in preparation.
Research Progress Status	28年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
Strategy for Future Research Activity	28年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
Causes of Carryover	28年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget	28年度が最終年度であるため、記入しない。
Remarks	I believe the patent has been approved by RIKEN and under review at the Japan patent office