Browsing by Author "McGinley, Matthew"

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    Hippocampal Encoding of Space Induced by Novel Auditory VR System using One-Photon Miniaturized Microscope
    (2020-04-24) Gao, Sibo; Kemere, Caleb; McGinley, Matthew
    In virtual reality settings, spatial navigation in animal models has traditionally been studied using primarily visual cues. However, auditory cues play an important role in navigation for animals, especially when the visual system cannot detect objects or predators in the dark. We have developed a virtual reality system defined exclusively by auditory landmarks for head-fixed mice performing a navigation task. We report behavioral evidence that mice can learn to navigate in our task. Namely, we observed anticipatory licking and modest anticipatory slowing preceding the reward region. Furthermore, we found that the animal’s licking behavior changes when switching from a familiar virtual environment to a novel virtual environment, followed by reverting to normal licking behavior after the familiar virtual environment is re-introduced within the same session. While animals carried out the task, we performed in-vivo calcium imaging in the CA1 region of the hippocampus using a modified Miniscope system. We envision that this approach has the potential to provide new insight into how animals respond to stimuli using spatial aspects of sound in an environment. (abstract adapted from Gao et al., EMBC’20, forthcoming).