场景的多模态信息整合在情感学习记忆中的神经机理

Emotion has a profound impact on human and animal behaviors. Our memories about emotional events are usually much stronger than those about neutral events. With fast-changing contexts in the modern society, it becomes challenging for people to control the emotion and take proper behaviors. Therefore, the context perception is the key to achieve this proper control of emotion and behavior. In the emotional learning and memory, it is a fundamental scientific question that how context perception is generated and regulates emotional behaviors. Accordingly, the multimodal sensory integration is essential for context perception, but the underlying neural mechanisms are largely unknown. This project aims to establish a system for single-cell functional connectome by combining trans-synaptic tracing, miniscope, optogenetics and brain clearing. As the hippocampus is such important for context perception, the goal is to fine dissect the mechanism how hippocampal neurons code and integrate multimodal sensory cues. Hopefully, these research methodologies could also promote other related research projects.

情绪对人和动物的行为都有深刻的影响，人们对情绪相关的记忆往往比中性事件的记忆要清晰得多。情感学习记忆总是发生在某一特定场景之中，正确的场景认知对情绪行为的正确表达及合理控制至关重要。其中多模态感觉信息整合是场景认知的关键，但其神经机理尚不清楚。多模态感觉信息整合是从基本感觉认知到高级认知的一个过程，海马脑区在当中具有重要作用，因此，本项目的中心目标是精细解析海马脑区整合多模态感觉信息的神经环路结构与功能。本项目以单细胞在体电生理记录为基础，并且联合应用跨突触环路示踪、光遗传、内窥镜显微成像和透明脑三维扫描重构等技术，建立一套绘制单细胞功能连接图谱的系统。这套实验系统在其他课题研究中也可以具有良好的应用前景。