Analysis of Spiking Activity in the Frontoparietal Network of the Ferret during Optogenetic Stimulation (2024)

Undergraduate: Abdulaziz Norbekov

Faculty Advisor: Flavio Frohlich
Department: Psychiatry

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Deficits in cognitive control, as is with attention, are a well-established symptom of many psychiatric conditions. Non-invasive brain stimulation therapies aimed at alleviating such symptoms require a greater understanding of the neural network(s) involved. The frontoparietal network has been implicated in with cognitive control through past studies measuring neural activity during cognitive control demanding tasks. Single unit analysis in one method of further understanding a neural network of interest. This study will investigate the effect of exogenous optogenetic stimulation on single unit activity in the frontoparietal network, specifically the PMC and PPC, of the ferret animal model performing the 5-CSRTT. Raster plots and K-means clustering analyses will be performed to characterize the unit types. Unit types found included those that increased and those that decreased in activity in response to optogenetic stimulation, and unit types that did not respond to stimulation. Some unit types may be representative of attentional allocation to different stimuli, but further research is still needed.