Aller au contenu principal

Séminaire impromptu – Alexei Vyssotski "Electrophysiological and behavioral monitoring in free-moving animals"

Détails de la réservation

Détails de l'évènement

Dr Alexei Vyssotski
ETHZ , Zurich

 "Electrophysiological and behavioral monitoring in free-moving animals"

 

Abstract :

Evolution of cognition remains one of the main mysteries of modern science. Social interactions are thought to be one of the major factors accelerating cognitive evolution. While social behaviors are supported by highly developed sophisticated brain structures, developing of evolutionary pleasurable models explaining animal behavior needs the analysis of brain activity in ecological context, in the animals involved in their natural social behavior.

To access brain activity during natural behaviors we have developed a set of wearable logging devices called Neurologgers. The latest Neurologger 3 is capable to record up to 64 neuronal channels into its up to 1TB memory and is small enough to be placed on the head of a small animal such as a mouse.

The main obstacle for investigating vocal interactions in vertebrates is the difficulty of discriminating individual vocalizations of rapidly moving, sometimes simultaneously vocalizing individuals. We developed a method of recording and analyzing individual vocalizations in free-ranging animals using ultraminiature back-attached sound and acceleration recorders. Our method allows the separation of zebra finch vocalizations irrespective of background noise and the number of vocalizing animals nearby, helping to reveal hierarchical network of vocalizations in songbird groups.

The recording of brain activity in freely flying navigating homing pigeons helps to reveal which navigation-relevant visual cues attract most of attention. The decreased brain activation by these stimuli in the flock-flying birds can be associated with decreased individual information processing in the case of collective decision making. The development of high-accuracy indoor tracking helps to address social interactions and collective decision making in a controllable environment.

However, not only comprehensive behavioral readout is needed, but also precisely localized brain activity. This makes the reliable long-lasting neural recording an emerging necessity. Recently developed ultra-thin flexible multichannel neural probes allow us to track activity of isolated cells up to 40 days. The combination of flexible electrodes with our Neurologgers may be a promising approach for days-long neural recording in freely moving animals in their natural environments.

Invité par Jérôme Badaut (INCIA)

Responsable

  • Nom : Jerome Badaut