[PhD Thesis Presentation] -Ray Xin Lee- Nature and source of animal spontaneous behaviors : Insights from psycho behavioral development and neuronal population dynamics in mice

Abstract:

Awake animals switch between different behavioral states irregularly even in a homogenous and steady environment, especially obvious outside from any behavioral task when they are free to voluntarily behave. These irregular but structured patterns have been taken as a representation of internal states such as emotion, and are believed to represent underlying background brain activity and its dynamics. To date, the nature and source of animal spontaneous behaviors remain as a major conceptual challenge to academia, due to the lack of approaches to systematically and quantitatively examine this fundamental process. To achieve insights about the neural substrate of animal spontaneous behaviors, the research was conducted in two directions: (i) To interpret previously challenging and inconclusive behavioral development by re-evaluating spontaneous behaviors that represent emotionality, centered on the study of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)-like internal psychological development in laboratory mice; (ii) To demonstrate a driving and control principle explaining fine-scale and global observations of neuronal and behavioral dynamics in spontaneously behaving mice, by two-photon calcium imaging of neuronal populations across cerebral cortical layers and areas. The results from these investigations provide the first system-level view of experimentally disentangled components, processes, and determinants explaining the nature and source of animal spontaneous behaviors.