McGill's Seminar Series in Quantitative Life Sciences and Medicine
Sponsored by CAMBAM, QLS, MiCM and the Ludmer Centre

Title: Oscillations as an organizing principle for understanding information processing in the rodent ventral striatum
Speaker: Matt van der Meer (Dartmouth)
When: Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 12-1pm 
Where: Montreal Neurological Institute, DeGrandpre Communications Centre

Abstract:The ventral striatum (vStr) is one of the most studied areas in the brain, a central node in a network of structures important for directing and energizing behavior, and a key player in the etiology of substance use disorders. All major inputs to the vStr, such as the hippocampus and frontal cortex, display striking temporal organization in the form of oscillations in neural activity, which have provided many important insights into the function of these areas. Surprisingly, however, oscillations in the vStr itself have only rarely been studied systematically. I will present work that (1) uses a novel application of GLMs to characterize rhythmic activity in vStr spike trains, (2) considers pitfalls in the interpretation of local field potential oscillations, which are particularly pernicious in the case of vStr, and (3) tests to what extent variable responses to a given input can be predicted based on LFP state variables. Together, these studies provide a foundation for a novel oscillatory perspective on understanding vStr function, which is well placed to address the interplay between local circuits and broader systems-level coordination.