Development of analytical approaches to investigate the neuronal coding in mice performing a goal-directed sensorimotor transformation

Details

Supervisors

Crevecoeur, Frédéric ; Crochet, Sylvain

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil en mathématiques appliquées, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Sensorimotor transformation is a fundamental cognitive process that transforms a relevant sensory input into an appropriate motor output, through the intermediary of a decision making. Recent studies showed that sensorimotor transformation is a more complex mechanism than a simple sequential process where each information (sensory, decision and motor) is successively encoded in one specific brain area only. The objective of this study is to investigate how the sensory, decision and motor information are represented in the neuronal activity of the whisker primary somatosensory cortex (wS1), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the tongue-jaw primary motor cortex (tjM1) in mice. Mice performed a reward-based whisker detection task, where they learned to lick in response to a whisker sensory stimulus. We conducted various analyses at single-neuron and population dynamic level by using Generalized Linear Models, searching for the best parameters through multiple simulations. We found that, regardless of the learning of the task, the three areas share information about the lick initiation, while the fine movement kinematics are best encoded in tjM1. We also found that purely sensory information is mostly encoded in wS1. Furthermore, we discovered lick decision information in wS1 and mPFC. Finally, results showed that GLMs are a useful and powerful tool to show correlations between neuronal data and external information.