Omputational perspectives of memory storage and gamma oscillation within the amygdala
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Background and motivation: Survival is a key trait seen in all animal species. To survive, it is necessary to have the ability to associate fear responses to new stimuli or circumstances, on the basis of experience, and it has been found that animals are "hard wired" for survival. The dorsal portion of amygdala (LAd) is known to play a primary role in the processing of auditory fear memory (LeDoux 2000). Repa et al. (2001) showed that ~25% of principal LA neurons (PNs) acquire conditioning-induced plasticity, and another recent study showed that only 25% of PNs store this "fear memory trace" (Han et al., 2007) although 70% receive CS and US inputs (Quirk et al., 1995; Repa et al., 2001; Rumpel et al., 2005). This dissertation describes computational modeling work that investigates the neuronal competition in the LA circuit that can shed light on understanding the mechanism behind this. Another important mechanism in the formation of fear memory requires transmission of signals between brain regions and this requires a temporal coding mechanism. Gamma oscillation are observed in numerous studies of emotional memory and processing, and such neuronal oscillations are thought to enable transmission and read-out of amplitude information more efficiently than neuronal rate integration (Fries et al., 2007). Gamma oscillation was recently detected in vivo in the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BL) (Amir et al., 2018). This dissertation will also describe a second computational model that investigates the underpinnings of the gamma rhythmic activity in BL and its control using optogenetics. This dissertation focuses on the modeling and analysis of a set of biological phenomenon at a cellular and systems level. The following section details the organization of this dissertation.
Degree
Ph. D.
Thesis Department
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