Neural Dynamics of Survival Circuits (360G-Wellcome-203775_Z_16_A)

Insights gained into CNS mechanisms underlying emotional behaviours are important in the development of strategies to improve emotional disorders and animal welfare. Little is known about the way central ‘emotional’ circuits engage with the motor system to generate the highly characteristic responses essential for survival (i.e. fight, flight or freezing). My project will explore and characterize relationships between the cerebellum and key components of survival networks. Neural pathways between CBM and periaqueductal grey (PAG) will be identified using two techniques: neuronal tracers (e.g. retrogradely transported canine adenovirus, CAV-2), to map projections and the specific location of their origins. Electrophysiological mapping in an anaesthetised animal to identify direct or multisynaptic functional connections. Depending on the outcome of this initial step, neural pathways will be inactivated using DREADDs in awake freely moving animals (rodents) during fear behavioural (e.g. fear conditioning, predatory odour) paradigms. There is also scope to record single unit and population (LFP) activity from regions such as the Amygdala, PAG and CBM, to investigate the networks dynamics between these regions, and how different aspects of defensive behaviours might be encoded in the brain. The LFP signals will then be used to develop and test Dynamic Causal Models (DCM) of connectivity.