Abstract
It has been widely recognized that the understanding of the brain code would require large-scale recording and decoding of brain activity patterns. In 2007 with support from Georgia Research Alliance, we have launched the Brain Decoding Project Initiative with the basic idea which is now similarly advocated by BRAIN project or Brain Activity Map proposal. As the planning of the BRAIN project is currently underway, we share our insights and lessons from our efforts in mapping real-time episodic memory traces in the hippocampus of freely behaving mice. We show that appropriate large-scale statistical methods are essential to decipher and measure real-time memory traces and neural dynamics. We also provide an example of how the carefully designed, sometime thinking-outside-the-box, behavioral paradigms can be highly instrumental to the unraveling of memory-coding cell assembly organizing principle in the hippocampus. Our observations to date have led us to conclude that the specific-to-general categorical and combinatorial feature-coding cell assembly mechanism represents an emergent property for enabling the neural networks to generate and organize not only episodic memory, but also semantic knowledge and imagination.
Highlights
Fifty years after Cajal’s observations Donald Hebb postulated that information processing in the brain may involve the coordinated activity of large numbers of neurons, or cell assemblies (Hebb, 1949)
Edgar Adrian in his pioneering recording showed that the firing rate of a frog muscle’s stretch receptor increases as a function of the weights on the muscle (Adrian, 1926), suggesting that information is conveyed by specific firing patterns of neurons
The traditional way to deal with the response variability of single neurons is to average spike discharge of the neurons over repeated trials
Summary
Fifty years after Cajal’s observations Donald Hebb postulated that information processing in the brain may involve the coordinated activity of large numbers of neurons, or cell assemblies (Hebb, 1949). Over the course of past several years, we have focused our initial efforts on three different but coherently linked aspects: 1) To employ large-scale neural recording techniques to collect large datasets on memory process in the mouse hippocampus; 2) To use a set of innovative behavioral paradigms to facilitate the discovery of memory organizing principles; 3) To develop and apply mathematical tools that are suitable for identification of neural ensembles activity patterns and uncovering its underlying cell assembly structures.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
