Group of neurons stimulated in awake mice with a visual stimulus (left) compared to the group of neurons stimulated via optogenetics (right)LUIS CARRILLO-REID, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITYSets of neurons in the brain that behave together—firing synchronously in response to sensory or motor stimuli—are thought to be functionally and physiologically connected. These naturally occurring ensembles of neurons are one of the ways memories may be programmed in the brain. Now, in a paper published today (August 11) in Science, researchers at Columbia University and their colleagues show that it is possible to stimulate visual cortex neurons in living, awake mice and induce a new ensemble of neurons that behave as a group and maintain their concerted firing for several days.
“This work takes the concept of correlated [neuronal] firing patterns in a new and important causal direction,” David Kleinfeld, a neurophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the work told The Scientist. “In a sense, [the researchers] created a memory for a visual feature that does not exist in the physical world as a proof of principal of how real visual memories are formed.”
“Researchers have previously related optogenetic stimulation to behavior [in animals], but this study breaks new ground by investigating the dynamics of neural activity in relation to the ensemble to which these neurons belong,” said Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in New Jersey who also was not involved in the study.
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