decision making
A Real-Time Look at Value-Based Decision Making
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
All of us make many decisions every day. For most things, such as which jacket to wear or where to grab a cup of coffee, there’s usually no right answer, so we often decide using values rooted in our past experiences. Now, neuroscientists have identified the part of the mammalian brain that stores information essential to such value-based decision making.
Researchers zeroed in on this particular brain region, known as the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), by analyzing movies—including the clip shown about 32 seconds into this video—that captured in real time what goes on in the brains of mice as they make decisions. Each white circle is a neuron, and the flickers of light reflect their activity: the brighter the light, the more active the neuron at that point in time.
All told, the NIH-funded team, led by Ryoma Hattori and Takaki Komiyama, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, made recordings of more than 45,000 neurons across six regions of the mouse brain [1]. Neural activity isn’t usually visible. But, in this case, researchers used mice that had been genetically engineered so that their neurons, when activated, expressed a protein that glowed.
Their system was also set up to encourage the mice to make value-based decisions, including choosing between two drinking tubes, each with a different probability of delivering water. During this decision-making process, the RSC proved to be the region of the brain where neurons persistently lit up, reflecting how the mouse evaluated one option over the other.
The new discovery, described in the journal Cell, comes as something of a surprise to neuroscientists because the RSC hadn’t previously been implicated in value-based decisions. To gather additional evidence, the researchers turned to optogenetics, a technique that enabled them to use light to inactivate neurons in the RSC’s of living animals. These studies confirmed that, with the RSC turned off, the mice couldn’t retrieve value information based on past experience.
The researchers note that the RSC is heavily interconnected with other key brain regions, including those involved in learning, memory, and controlling movement. This indicates that the RSC may be well situated to serve as a hub for storing value information, allowing it to be accessed and acted upon when it is needed.
The findings are yet another amazing example of how advances coming out of the NIH-led Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative are revolutionizing our understanding of the brain. In the future, the team hopes to learn more about how the RSC stores this information and sends it to other parts of the brain. They note that it will also be important to explore how activity in this brain area may be altered in schizophrenia, dementia, substance abuse, and other conditions that may affect decision-making abilities. It will also be interesting to see how this develops during childhood and adolescence.
Reference:
[1] Area-Specificity and Plasticity of History-Dependent Value Coding During Learning. Hattori R, Danskin B, Babic Z, Mlynaryk N, Komiyama T. Cell. 2019 Jun 13;177(7):1858-1872.e15.
Links:
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Komiyama Lab (UCSD, La Jolla)
NIH Support: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National Eye Institute; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
A Neuronal Light Show
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
These colorful lights might look like a video vignette from one of the spectacular evening light shows taking place this holiday season. But they actually aren’t. These lights are illuminating the way to a much fuller understanding of the mammalian brain.
The video features a new research method called BARseq (Barcoded Anatomy Resolved by Sequencing). Created by a team of NIH-funded researchers led by Anthony Zador, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, BARseq enables scientists to map in a matter of weeks the location of thousands of neurons in the mouse brain with greater precision than has ever been possible before.
How does it work? With BARseq, researchers generate uniquely identifying RNA barcodes and then tag one to each individual neuron within brain tissue. As reported recently in the journal Cell, those barcodes allow them to keep track of the location of an individual cell amid millions of neurons [1]. This also enables researchers to map the tangled paths of individual neurons from one region of the mouse brain to the next.
The video shows how the researchers read the barcodes. Each twinkling light is a barcoded neuron within a thin slice of mouse brain tissue. The changing colors from frame to frame correspond to one of the four letters, or chemical bases, in RNA (A=purple, G=blue, U=yellow, and C=white). A neuron that flashes blue, purple, yellow, white is tagged with a barcode that reads GAUC, while yellow, white, white, white is UCCC.
By sequencing and reading the barcodes to distinguish among seemingly identical cells, the researchers mapped the connections of more than 3,500 neurons in a mouse’s auditory cortex, a part of the brain involved in hearing. In fact, they report they’re now able to map tens of thousands of individual neurons in a mouse in a matter of weeks.
What makes BARseq even better than the team’s previous mapping approach, called MAPseq, is its ability to read the barcodes at their original location in the brain tissue [2]. As a result, they can produce maps with much finer resolution. It’s also possible to maintain other important information about each mapped neuron’s identity and function, including the expression of its genes.
Zador reports that they’re continuing to use BARseq to produce maps of other essential areas of the mouse brain with more detail than had previously been possible. Ultimately, these maps will provide a firm foundation for better understanding of human thought, consciousness, and decision-making, along with how such mental processes get altered in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and depression.
Here’s wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season. It’s been a fantastic year in science, and I look forward to bringing you more cool NIH-supported research in 2020!
References:
[1] High-Throughput Mapping of Long-Range Neuronal Projection Using In Situ Sequencing. Chen X, Sun YC, Zhan H, Kebschull JM, Fischer S, Matho K, Huang ZJ, Gillis J, Zador AM. Cell. 2019 Oct 17;179(3):772-786.e19.
[2] High-Throughput Mapping of Single-Neuron Projections by Sequencing of Barcoded RNA. Kebschull JM, Garcia da Silva P, Reid AP, Peikon ID, Albeanu DF, Zador AM. Neuron. 2016 Sep 7;91(5):975-987.
Links:
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
Zador Lab (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY)
NIH Support: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Cancer Institute
