Topic: Up states

Understanding the neural circuitry involved in fear memory is expected to provide implications for mental disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are essential for the consolidation of fear memories. This consolidation occurs in particular when BLA neurons responding to aversive stimuli are reactivated during non-REM sleep. However, the neural circuit mechanism during non-REM sleep remains unclear. We focus on the role of neocortical slow waves, a hallmark of non-REM sleep, in fear memory formation. By recording l

During NREM sleep and anesthesia, the cerebral cortex generates low-frequency synchronized activity, known as Slow Wave Oscillation (SWO). In this brain state, cortical neurons alternate between hyperpolarized Down states and depolarized Up states, which will travel from their source through cortico-cortical connections along the whole cortex. This makes the SWO an ideal model to understand cortico-cortical communication and disentangle local properties from those that are controlled by the network state.In this project, we built a computational model of coupled cortical populations under the