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#journalclub

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El Duvelle Neuro

#NeuroESC #JournalClub
Reading Mental exploration of future choices during immobility theta oscillations

If you've read it, will you let me know what you think?

The authors look at #ThetaSequences in a working memory task in a radial arm maze. They find theta during immobility (makes sense, e.g. we saw that in our two-goals task). They also find that theta sequences might preferentially represent the next goal (also makes sense, e.g. Hippocampal theta sequences reflect current goals)!

I have only done a quick reading so far, but am confused by a few points:

Let me know what you think!

GIF
#LeutgebLab#NeuroRat#Neuroscience
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Virgile Andreani

And the best opening line of the year goes to…

> Imagine that you’re trapped in the video game Minecraft and that the only way you can return to the real world is if you successfully approximate the values of various mathematical constants using the mechanics of the game.

arxiv.org/abs/2411.18464

arXiv.orgApproximating Mathematical Constants using MinecraftIn this article we will use Minecraft to experimentally approximate the values of four different mathematical constants. The mathematical constants that we will approximate are $\sqrt{2}, π$, Euler's number $e$, and Apéry's constant $ζ(3)$. We will begin each section with a brief history of the number being approximated and describe where it appears in mathematics. We then explain how we used Minecraft mechanics to approximate the constant. At the end of each section, we provide some ideas for how to apply our techniques to the approximation of other mathematical constants in Minecraft or elsewhere. This article is a proof of concept that Minecraft can be used in higher education. We should note that the goal of this article is not to have the most accurate approximations possible, the goal is to inspire people to have fun while learning about various mathematical topics. We hope you learn something new in this article and feel inspired to try some of these techniques on your own.
#math#JournalClub
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El Duvelle Neuro

My latest #Neuroesc #JournalClub was on this:
Rat anterior cingulate neurons responsive to rule or strategy changes are modulated by the hippocampal theta rhythm and sharp-wave ripples

I won't do a super-long summary like last time, but please share your thoughts if you've read it!

The author line-up is quite interesting, I think they were all students at the time of data collection which seems to have happened a long time ago, and now many are PIs (@BenoitGirard probably knows about the backstory...)! Probably a pandemic paper??

The scientific question (what supports rule recognition and strategy shift) is really interesting, and they record in the frontal cortex (#ACC) as well as #Hippocampus (ventral CA1!), but the rats just were not up to the task (1/5 rats actually did what they wanted). I am also not fully convinced by some of the analysis. @jessetm I'd be interested to know what you think of their strategy detection method!

Why is it that all papers looking at these themes always end up being.. quite complex??

#Neuroscience#NavigationStrategies#theta
Continued thread
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El Duvelle Neuro

my (personal) summary and then comments for this #JournalClub

any corrections, comments, additional questions are welcome, especially from the first author @jessetm

1/7
The main goal of this paper is to test if #VTEs (Vicarious Trial-and Error) and medial prefrontal cortex LFP relate to navigation behaviour parameters such as behavioural flexibility, performance and strategy use, during allocentric* navigation.

VTEs are a behaviour that rodents and humans do at choice points, looking alternatively at the different available options before choosing one (check video below). They have been studied mostly during response-based tasks (when the subjects have to learn a body-oriented response or sequence of responses to the reward). From that research, two possible roles for VTEs have been suggested: deliberation (weighing down the available options) or uncertainty (hesitation).

The current paper aims to test which is the most likely role of these two, by having a task involving a lot of deliberation and a lot of uncertainty (protocol explained below).
The main conclusion is that these two VTE types actually exist, which means VTEs should not just be interpreted as a marker of behavioural flexibility or deliberation. There is are also some interesting findings about different LFP rhythms in the medial prefrontal cortex being stronger during different types of behaviours (explained below).
(*) (allocentric = based on an external reference frame, like the Water maze task)

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cc: @Andrewpapale, @drdrowland, feel free to add your comments /questions anywhere you want!

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El Duvelle Neuro

For our next #NeuroESC #JournalClub I will read this paper from @jessetm :

Flexible decision-making is related to strategy learning, vicarious trial and error, and medial prefrontal rhythms during spatial set-shifting

get the PDF at: drive.google.com/file/d/1qmfye

Anyone else interested? We could all pledge to read it and then discuss it here afterwards (Next Friday) 👀

learnmem.cshlp.orgFlexible decision-making is related to strategy learning, vicarious trial and error, and medial prefrontal rhythms during spatial set-shiftingPeer-reviewed scientific journal publishing basic neuroscience research in the areas of neuronal plasticity, learning and memory
#Neuroscience#VTE#FlexibleDecisions
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El Duvelle Neuro

#JournalClub on Closed-loop modulation of remote hippocampal representations with neurofeedback, from #FrankLab: little summary + comments.

  • The goal is to see if rats can deliberately reactivate internal representations, without external cues.
  • The authors design a closed-loop system that does clusterless real-time decoding of position and rewards the rats when they reactivate a specific maze arm end.
  • The rats go through a gradual training process: first getting reward on the actual maze (a T-maze), then getting reward in the home box when they orient towards the target arm of the maze [head-direction task], then getting reward in the home box when they reactivate the representation of the target maze end [neurofeedback task].
  • The rat's performance is not too bad given the difficulty of the task, kudos to Rat2 who seemed to really know what he was doing.
  • interestingly, the reactivations do not happen during #SharpWaveRipples, and not really during theta either, just during an uncharacterised LFP state.
  • Little caveat 1: as far as I can see, the head-direction of the rats is not shown in any plot and it is not possible to say if the rats might still be doing the head-direction task during the neurofeedback task. That being said, the rats clearly reactivate the target arm more in the neurofeedback than head-direction task, which is quite convincing.

  • Little caveat 2: the performance is always shown in terms of total rewards collected, and not reward rate. So in different sessions rats might reach the maximum reward but take twice the time. Showing reward rate would be more informative.

  • conclusion: this is pretty cool, but we would really need to know about the head-direction.

  • question for the audience: what do you think the rats "think about" during those reactivation moments??

#Neuroscience #HippocampalReplay (not really) #ThetaSequences (not really) #PlaceCells #NeuroRat #Hippocampus

Screenshot of task protocol, I will paste the legend below: "The task environment consisted of a central “box” area with a central reward port and two arms, each with a reward port at the end. The end of one of the two arms was used as the target location for neurofeedback in each session. Note that the walls surrounding the central box are opaque. Each task session contained two task phases, exploration and feedback. During the feedback phase, either specific head directions or remote target representation were detected and triggered a tone. A nosepoke at the center well within 3 seconds of the tone then triggered delivery of reward"
screenshot of figure showing an example representation, see legend: "Clusterless decoding of hippocampal activity accurately tracked the rat’s actual position during movement. During feedback, the decoder detected remote representations that triggered tone and reward"
Screenshot of Figure showing the increased representation of the target location in the neurofeedback sessions vs the head-direction sessions. See legend: "Grouped (LME) analysis across all 6 rats."
Screenshot of figure showing the type of brain state (ripple, non-ripple, theta) during which the rewarded epoch happened. Legend: "Summary of brain state during remote representations."
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