“Adaptive circuit shift for behavior acquisition and adaptation during operant learning “

Animals often acquire an appropriate behavior for their optimal goal by operant learning, and the behavior will be adapted and changed as a habit eventually after its heavy repetition. Although this process has been believed to be accomplished by a functional shift in parallel cortex-basal ganglia loops, little is known about the circuit mechanism itself in detail. So far, we have established a useful behavioral task system in which rats operantly learn a lever manipulation with their forelimb in a head-fixed condition, and have tried to characterize functional activities of neurons in the cerebral cortex (motor cortex, hippocampus) and basal ganglia (striatum) in the behaving rats, by using electrophysiological measurements such as multi-neuronal and juxtacellular recordings.

In our present study, we are aiming to understand the dynamics of functional circuit shift among the limbic cortex-basal ganglia loop (emotion, motivation), the prefrontal cortex-basal ganglia loop (learning of goal-directed behaviors), and the motor cortex-basal ganglia loop (motor control, habituation). To address this issue, we combine our original behavioral experiments with the electrophysiological measurements and optogenetics, analyze functional changes in neuronal activity in these loops during the operant learning, and verify its mechanism by theoretical models, to elucidate the dynamics of functional circuit shift for a progress of operant learning.

 
Recent Publications
1. Saiki, A. et al. (2014) Different modulation of common motor information in rat primary and secondary motor cortices. PLoS ONE 9: e98662.
2. Isomura, Y. et al. (2013) Reward-modulated motor information in identified striatum neurons. J. Neurosci. 33: 10209-10220.
3. Kimura, R. et al. (2012) Reinforcing operandum: rapid and reliable learning of skilled forelimb movements by head-fixed rodents. J. Neurophysiol. 108: 1781-1792.

Posted:2016/02/23