We combine ad hoc behavioral protocols for rats and mice, high density electrophysiological recordings in freely moving animals and pharmacological and optogenetic manipulations to study the networks and neural dynamics underlying the learning and execution of bilaterally coordinated actions.
A video of Paco, one of our first helping animals, performing an early version of our task.
A video of a skillful animal performing the latest version of our task during recordings of the dorsolateral striatum. The lower panels depict (in ascending order) the raster plots for tree well isolated units, the perievent histogram for the same units, the left and right lever trajectories, and head position trajectory. The "clicking sound" correspond to the action potentials of each of the tree neurons simultaneously recorded.
In this project we use a behavioral protocol for rats, where animals are trained to estimate and produce time intervals trough the execution of sequences of movements. We manipulate different paramateres of the task to highlight specific compoments of the execution. We analize the participation of thalamic, cortical and basal ganglia networks in the compostion of this behavior.
We are interested in understanding the function of the cannabinergic receptor type 1 in specific synapses of cortical, striatal and thalamic circuits in the context of the execution of specific parameters of movements, such as timing, speed or amplitude. In this project we work with both, rats and mice.