ICLM Journal Club
This Friday - December 2, 2022 (9:30 am, in person, Gonda 1357)
Speaker: Pingping Zhao
Title: Accelerated representational drift in nucleus accumbens social representations in a model of autism
Summary: Impaired social interaction is one of the core deficits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and may result from social interactions being less rewarding in ASD. Whether and how the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a key hub of reward circuitry, encodes and drives social interaction and whether NAc neural population codes for social interaction are disrupted in ASD are still poorly understood. To answer these questions, we performed calcium imaging using miniaturized microscopy and identified NAc ensembles which specifically encode social interactions. At the population level, NAc activity patterns, and specifically, D1-receptor expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-MSNs) population activity, predicted social interaction epochs. NAc-based decoders showed higher performance than decoders trained with medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) or dorsal hippocampal CA1 (dCA1) activity. Although there was high turnover of NAc neurons modulated by social interaction across days, cross-day decoding was still robust and revealed a stable social representation in NAc. Intriguingly, this stability was impaired in the Cntnap2-/- mouse model of ASD. Therefore, social interactions are preferentially, specifically, and dynamically encoded by NAc neurons and social representations are degraded in autism model.
Relevant Papers:
About Us
Introduction
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory (ICLM) is a multidisciplinary center of UCLA labs devoted to understanding the neural basis of learning and memory and its disorders. This will require a unified approach across different levels of analysis, including;
1. Elucidating the molecular cellular and systems mechanisms that allow neurons and synapses to undergo the long-term changes that ultimately correspond to 'neural memories'.
2. Understanding how functional dynamics and computations emerge from complex circuits of neurons, and how plasticity governs these processes.
3. Describing the neural systems in which different forms of learning and memory take place, and how these systems interact to ultimately generate behavior and cognition.
History of ICLM
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory formally LMP started in its current form in 1998, and has served as a platform for many interactions and collaborations within UCLA. A key event organized by the group is the weekly ICLM Journal Club. For more than 10 years, graduate students, postdocs, principal investigators, and invited speakers have presented on topics ranging from the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, through computational models of learning, to behavior and cognition. Dean Buonomano oversees the ICLM journal club with help of student/post doctoral organizers. For other events organized by ICLM go to http://www.iclm.ucla.edu/Events.html.
Current Organizers:
Saray Soldado (Buonomano Lab) & Lukas Oesch (Churchland Lab). Please email us at iclm.journalclub@gmail.com if you would like to get regular updates regarding our journal club and weekly reminders.
Current Faculty Advisor:
Past Organizers:
i) Anna Matynia(Aug 2004 - Jun 2008) (Silva Lab)
ii) Robert Brown (Aug 2008 - Jun 2009) (Balleine Lab)
iii) Balaji Jayaprakash (Aug 2008 - Nov 2011) (Silva Lab)
iv) Justin Shobe & Thomas Rogerson (Dec 2011 - June 2013) (Silva Lab)
v) Walt Babiec (O'Dell Lab) (2013-2014)
vi) Walt Babiec (O'Dell Lab) & Helen Motanis (Buonomano Lab) (2014-2017)
vii) Helen Motanis (Buonomano Lab) & Shonali Dhingra (Mehta Lab) (2017-2018)
viii) Shonali Dhingra (Mehta Lab) (2018-2020)
ix) Megha Sehgal (Silva Lab) & Giselle Fernandes (Silva Lab) (2020-2022)
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