Functional relevance of mouse cortical areas in multisensory change detection

Sensory decision-making requires the integration of multiple sensory modalities, allowing for the planning of actions that are suitable to the situation. From research, we know that specific perceptual modalities are processed in their respective primary sensory areas, and that this information is transferred to motor areas via a dorsal information stream. However, it is currently unknown how these respective modalities are differentiated, but also combined to form an appropriate motor plan. The aim of this project is to shed light on the contributions of neural coding mechanisms in different brain areas in this process. Several studies reveal that local neural mechanisms correlated to decision can be found in brain regions all throughout the brain, but that this activity is not necessarily causal to the perceptual decision. Therefore, we aim to answer the question of what brain areas are causally involved in sensory processing and/or the planning and execution of behaviour based on sensory stimuli. This will be done by means of laser-scanning optogenetics, which allows for rapid cortex-wide inhibition within animals trained on a multisensory change detection task.

Your role in this experiment will mostly consist of: 1) daily training of mice, 2) assisting in optogenetic scanning wherever possible, 3) histology of opsin-expression, 4) data analysis with Python or MATLAB (for example, neural recording data, pupil dilation data, help with setting up optogenetic scanning pipeline).

Looking for an intern for min. 6 months, starting in December 2024/January 2025. Contact [staat bij de werkgever]