Optical techniques for mapping functional brain organization in mice

My lab develops optical imaging hardware and software analyses for mapping cortical neurophysiology in mice. We use these tools to determine fundamental principles of brain organization and how changes in brain network activity/connectivity shape behavior in health and disease. This talk will review some of our lab’s techniques for mapping cell specific circuits/networks and representations of ethologically-relevant behaviors in mice. Our results demonstrate that behavioral representations are topographically and hierarchically organized on the cortex and mirror underlying patterns of functional network connectivity. Implications of these findings in the context of neurological disease will also be discussed.