Venue: Centre Broca
Dr. Christina Mo
The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne
https://florey.edu.au/researcher/christina-mo/
Invited by Naoya Takahashi (IINS)
Title
Cortex–Thalamus Circuit Dynamics in Perception
Abstract
How interactions between different brain regions support perception and decision-making is a central question in neuroscience. Growing evidence suggests that interactions between cortex and thalamus play an important role.
In this talk, Dr. Christina Mo will describe work examining how cortex–thalamus communication changes as mice learn a tactile discrimination task. Using a combination of cellular-resolution imaging in cortex and thalamus (one or two -photon microscopy), together with optogenetic manipulations and modelling, she and her team tracked the representation of circuit activity across learning and how it influences behaviour.
They find that specific corticothalamic pathways become critical for perception by linking sensory representations to behavioural relevance. These results highlight the importance of distributed cortical networks through the thalamus in adaptive perception.