A grand challenge in neuroscience is to understand the biological basis of information processing at the cellular and network levels. One major technological barrier to continuing progress is the lack of adequate informatics and analysis tools to enable exploration of the structural organization of complex neural circuits, the discovery and understanding of emergent properties of neural ensembles, the formulation of quantitative hypotheses about neural computation, and the testing of those hypotheses experimentally. We have developed a prototype database system that provides many of the needed capabilities, and have used this software system to study mechanisms underlying neural encoding. The general goals of the work proposed here are to extend the capabilities and general utility of this prototype system, to interface the database with several additional tools for the analysis of structural and time-series data, and to enable more effective data sharing between remote collaborators. The core informatics and neuroscience research will be carried out by a group of researchers at Montana State University. Collaborations have also been established with researchers at several other research institutions, to insure interoperability of our system with other data collection and analysis tools and to facilitate the testing and refinement of our system. The investigator and co-investigators are all funded through NIH to study dynamic aspects of sensory processing at the cellular and network levels in a variety of preparations, including the cat and monkey visual systems. The researchers all share the following general neuroscience research aims: a) to understand the relationships between spatio-temporal activity patterns in neural ensembles and the information they convey, b) to understand how the spatio-temporal patterns at one processing stage are decoded at the next processing stage, c) to understand how computations are carried out on that decoded information, and d) to understand the mechanisms through which the observed dynamical patterns emerge from the morphology, synaptic connectivity, and intrinsic biophysical characteristics of the neurons in the ensembles. The software tools developed here will be applied to these ongoing studies, enabling a substantial increase in the breadth, depth, rigor, and rate of progress of those research projects. That neuroscience research will, in turn, provide a rigorous basis for the refinement, generalization and extension of the informatics tools.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH064416-02
Application #
6529045
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-SSS-Q (02))
Program Officer
Hirsch, Michael D
Project Start
2001-09-01
Project End
2006-08-31
Budget Start
2002-09-01
Budget End
2003-08-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$318,375
Indirect Cost
Name
Montana State University Bozeman
Department
Anatomy/Cell Biology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
City
Bozeman
State
MT
Country
United States
Zip Code
59717
Heys, Jeffrey J; Rajaraman, Prathish K; Gedeon, Tomas et al. (2012) A model of filiform hair distribution on the cricket cercus. PLoS One 7:e46588
Dupuy, Fabienne; Steinmann, Thomas; Pierre, Dominique et al. (2012) Responses of cricket cercal interneurons to realistic naturalistic stimuli in the field. J Exp Biol 215:2382-9
Aldworth, Zane N; Bender, John A; Miller, John P (2012) Information transmission in cercal giant interneurons is unaffected by axonal conduction noise. PLoS One 7:e30115
Miller, John P; Krueger, Susan; Heys, Jeffrey J et al. (2011) Quantitative characterization of the filiform mechanosensory hair array on the cricket cercus. PLoS One 6:e27873
Aldworth, Zane N; Dimitrov, Alexander G; Cummins, Graham I et al. (2011) Temporal encoding in a nervous system. PLoS Comput Biol 7:e1002041
Mulder-Rosi, Jonas; Cummins, Graham I; Miller, John P (2010) The cricket cercal system implements delay-line processing. J Neurophysiol 103:1823-32
Jacobs, Gwen A; Miller, John P; Aldworth, Zane (2008) Computational mechanisms of mechanosensory processing in the cricket. J Exp Biol 211:1819-28