Project acronym BrainInBrain
Project Neural circuits underlying complex brain function across animals - from conserved core concepts to specializations defining a species’ identity
Researcher (PI) Stanley HEINZE
Host Institution (HI) LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS5, ERC-2016-STG
Summary The core function of all brains is to compute the current state of the world, compare it to the desired state of the world and select motor programs that drive behavior minimizing any mismatch. The circuits underlying these functions are the key to understand brains in general, but so far they are completely unknown. Three problems have hindered progress: 1) The animal’s desired state of the world is rarely known. 2) Most studies in simple models have focused on sensory driven, reflex-like processes, and not considered self-initiated behavior. 3) The circuits underlying complex behaviors in vertebrates are widely distributed, containing millions of neurons. With this proposal I aim at overcoming these problems using insects, whose tiny brains solve the same basic problems as our brains but with 100,000 times fewer cells. Moreover, the central complex, a single conserved brain region consisting of only a few thousand neurons, is crucial for sensory integration, motor control and state-dependent modulation, essentially being a ‘brain in the brain’. To simplify the problem further I will focus on navigation behavior. Here, the desired and actual states of the world are equal to the desired and current headings of the animal, with mismatches resulting in compensatory steering. I have previously shown how the central complex encodes the animal’s current heading. Now I will use behavioral training to generate animals with highly defined desired headings, and correlate neural activity with the animal’s ‘intentions’ and actions - at the level of identified neurons. To establish the involved conserved core circuitry valid across insects I will compare species with distinct lifestyles. Secondly, I will reveal how these circuits have evolved to account for each species’ unique ecology. The proposed work will provide a coherent framework to study key concepts of fundamental brain functions in unprecedented detail - using a single, conserved, but flexible neural circuit.
Summary
The core function of all brains is to compute the current state of the world, compare it to the desired state of the world and select motor programs that drive behavior minimizing any mismatch. The circuits underlying these functions are the key to understand brains in general, but so far they are completely unknown. Three problems have hindered progress: 1) The animal’s desired state of the world is rarely known. 2) Most studies in simple models have focused on sensory driven, reflex-like processes, and not considered self-initiated behavior. 3) The circuits underlying complex behaviors in vertebrates are widely distributed, containing millions of neurons. With this proposal I aim at overcoming these problems using insects, whose tiny brains solve the same basic problems as our brains but with 100,000 times fewer cells. Moreover, the central complex, a single conserved brain region consisting of only a few thousand neurons, is crucial for sensory integration, motor control and state-dependent modulation, essentially being a ‘brain in the brain’. To simplify the problem further I will focus on navigation behavior. Here, the desired and actual states of the world are equal to the desired and current headings of the animal, with mismatches resulting in compensatory steering. I have previously shown how the central complex encodes the animal’s current heading. Now I will use behavioral training to generate animals with highly defined desired headings, and correlate neural activity with the animal’s ‘intentions’ and actions - at the level of identified neurons. To establish the involved conserved core circuitry valid across insects I will compare species with distinct lifestyles. Secondly, I will reveal how these circuits have evolved to account for each species’ unique ecology. The proposed work will provide a coherent framework to study key concepts of fundamental brain functions in unprecedented detail - using a single, conserved, but flexible neural circuit.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym METLAKE
Project Predicting future methane fluxes from Northern lakes
Researcher (PI) DAVID TORBJORN EMANUEL BASTVIKEN
Host Institution (HI) LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), PE10, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The new global temperature goal calls for reliable quantification of present and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including climate feedbacks. Non-CO2 GHGs, with methane (CH4) being the most important, represent a large but highly uncertain component in global GHG budget. Lakes are among the largest natural sources of CH4 but our understanding of lake CH4 fluxes is rudimentary. Lake emissions are not yet routinely monitored, and coherent, spatially representative, long-term datasets are rare which hamper accurate flux estimates and predictions.
METLAKE aims to improve our ability to quantify and predict lake CH4 emissions. Major goals include: (1) the development of robust validated predictive models suitable for use at the lake rich northern latitudes where large climate changes are anticipated in the near future, (2) the testing of the idea that appropriate consideration of spatiotemporal scaling can greatly facilitate generation of accurate yet simple predictive models, (3) to reveal and quantify detailed flux regulation patterns including spatiotemporal interactions and response times to environmental change, and (4) to pioneer novel use of sensor networks and near ground remote sensing with a new hyperspectral CH4 camera suitable for large-scale high resolution CH4 measurements.
Extensive field work based on optimized state-of-the-art approaches will generate multi-scale and multi-system data, supplemented by experiments, and evaluated by data analyses and modelling approaches targeting effects of scaling on model performance.
Altogether, METLAKE will advance our understanding of one of the largest natural CH4 sources, and provide us with systematic tools to predict future lake emissions. Such quantification of feedbacks on natural GHG emissions is required to move beyond state-of-the-art regarding global GHG budgets and to estimate the mitigation efforts needed to reach global climate goals.
Summary
The new global temperature goal calls for reliable quantification of present and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including climate feedbacks. Non-CO2 GHGs, with methane (CH4) being the most important, represent a large but highly uncertain component in global GHG budget. Lakes are among the largest natural sources of CH4 but our understanding of lake CH4 fluxes is rudimentary. Lake emissions are not yet routinely monitored, and coherent, spatially representative, long-term datasets are rare which hamper accurate flux estimates and predictions.
METLAKE aims to improve our ability to quantify and predict lake CH4 emissions. Major goals include: (1) the development of robust validated predictive models suitable for use at the lake rich northern latitudes where large climate changes are anticipated in the near future, (2) the testing of the idea that appropriate consideration of spatiotemporal scaling can greatly facilitate generation of accurate yet simple predictive models, (3) to reveal and quantify detailed flux regulation patterns including spatiotemporal interactions and response times to environmental change, and (4) to pioneer novel use of sensor networks and near ground remote sensing with a new hyperspectral CH4 camera suitable for large-scale high resolution CH4 measurements.
Extensive field work based on optimized state-of-the-art approaches will generate multi-scale and multi-system data, supplemented by experiments, and evaluated by data analyses and modelling approaches targeting effects of scaling on model performance.
Altogether, METLAKE will advance our understanding of one of the largest natural CH4 sources, and provide us with systematic tools to predict future lake emissions. Such quantification of feedbacks on natural GHG emissions is required to move beyond state-of-the-art regarding global GHG budgets and to estimate the mitigation efforts needed to reach global climate goals.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-04-01, End date: 2022-03-31
Project acronym PainCells
Project Decomposition of pain into celltypes
Researcher (PI) Johan Patrik Ernfors
Host Institution (HI) KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS5, ERC-2016-ADG
Summary Almost 20% of the population has an ongoing pain problem. Pain is caused by a complex recruitment of different types of sensory neurons with different response-profiles and hence, the integrated response of an assembly of different neuronal types results in pain. Due to technical limitations, a system-wide approach to resolve the complexity of cell types and their involvement in the development of pain has yet not been tried.
PainCells will first identify and classify sensory neuron types by single-cell RNA seq in rodent and non-human primate. Based on the new classification we will determine the cellular basis for transduction of somatic sensation by developing enabling technologies allowing an activity-based Cre-dependent permanent labeling and identification by RNA-seq the exact cell types and hence, also neuronal assemblies active during particular types of pain. These assemblies will thereafter be silenced, ablated or artificially activated to functionally determine the role of these circuits in pain disorders. This work will for the first time reveal the full complexity of different cell types engaged in particular types of pain and unravel by activity-based mouse genetics the role of that these play in pain disorders. Thus, PainCells will reveal system-wide principles of coding pain in the nervous system.
PainCells will also address the role of terminal glial cells in the skin. This ignored cell type has in preliminary results been shown to respond to and transmit painful stimuli to primary sensory neurons. We will ascertain the role of terminal glial cells in the skin as pain initiating cells and in pain disorders. The discovery that glial cells in addition to sensory neurons represent pain receptive cells should fundamentally change the pain field.
Overall, this proposal takes a new system-wide strategy in that will affect development of new pain managing drugs, a field that has made little clinical advance the past century.
Summary
Almost 20% of the population has an ongoing pain problem. Pain is caused by a complex recruitment of different types of sensory neurons with different response-profiles and hence, the integrated response of an assembly of different neuronal types results in pain. Due to technical limitations, a system-wide approach to resolve the complexity of cell types and their involvement in the development of pain has yet not been tried.
PainCells will first identify and classify sensory neuron types by single-cell RNA seq in rodent and non-human primate. Based on the new classification we will determine the cellular basis for transduction of somatic sensation by developing enabling technologies allowing an activity-based Cre-dependent permanent labeling and identification by RNA-seq the exact cell types and hence, also neuronal assemblies active during particular types of pain. These assemblies will thereafter be silenced, ablated or artificially activated to functionally determine the role of these circuits in pain disorders. This work will for the first time reveal the full complexity of different cell types engaged in particular types of pain and unravel by activity-based mouse genetics the role of that these play in pain disorders. Thus, PainCells will reveal system-wide principles of coding pain in the nervous system.
PainCells will also address the role of terminal glial cells in the skin. This ignored cell type has in preliminary results been shown to respond to and transmit painful stimuli to primary sensory neurons. We will ascertain the role of terminal glial cells in the skin as pain initiating cells and in pain disorders. The discovery that glial cells in addition to sensory neurons represent pain receptive cells should fundamentally change the pain field.
Overall, this proposal takes a new system-wide strategy in that will affect development of new pain managing drugs, a field that has made little clinical advance the past century.
Max ERC Funding
2 443 953 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-08-01, End date: 2022-07-31
