Research
My advisors are Jean-Marc Fellous and Michael Chertkov. The primary research questions we are tackling is: Given just the observational data (such as, spike train neural data), is it possible to reliably extract the causal relationship between the variables (neurons)?
- Hippocampal replay is characterized by the reactivation of neural sequences during non-exploratory states. That is, when the rat goes to sleep or rest, it shows a similar firing activity as observed during the task exploration, indicating that the rat is revisiting the task in sleep and storing the memory of what was explored.
- The generation of replay is crucial for memory consolidation and retention and is key to retrieving previous memories. Replay episodes contain information about the causality structure within a network of neurons, which helps to experimentally track how the memories are formed during learning.
- Extracting the neurons involved in replay, and the order in which the replay episodes propagate, highlights the role of place cells in spatial navigation. This provides insights into learning and decision-making in complex environments.
- When the rat is reintroduced to a task sometime later during wakefulness, the exploration performance indicates how well the memory of the task was stored and if the learning has occurred.
Below are two posters prepared for the Neuroscience 2023 and the Neuroscience 2024.