On brain activity mapping: insights and lessons from Brain Decoding Project to map memory patterns in the hippocampus

Joe Z. Tsien, Meng Li, Remus Osan, GuiFen Chen, LongNian Lin, Phillip Lei Wang, Sabine Frey, Julietta Frey, DaJiang Zhu, TianMing Liu, Fang Zhao, Hui Kuang
2013 Science China Life Sciences  
The BRAIN project recently announced by the president Obama is the reflection of unrelenting human quest for cracking the brain code, the patterns of neuronal activity that define who we are and what we are. While the Brain Activity Mapping proposal has rightly emphasized on the need to develop new technologies for measuring every spike from every neuron, it might be helpful to consider both the theoretical and experimental aspects that would accelerate our search for the organizing principles
more » ... f the brain code. Here we share several insights and lessons from the similar proposal, namely, Brain Decoding Project that we initiated since 2007. We provide a specific example in our initial mapping of real-time memory traces from one part of the memory circuit, namely, the CA1 region of the mouse hippocampus. We show how innovative behavioral tasks and appropriate mathematical analyses of large datasets can play equally, if not more, important roles in uncovering the specific-togeneral feature-coding cell assembly mechanism by which episodic memory, semantic knowledge, and imagination are generated and organized. Our own experiences suggest that the bottleneck of the Brain Project is not only at merely developing additional new technologies, but also the lack of efficient avenues to disseminate cutting edge platforms and decoding expertise to neuroscience community. Therefore, we propose that in order to harness unique insights and extensive knowledge from various investigators working in diverse neuroscience subfields, ranging from perception and emotion to memory and social behaviors, the BRAIN project should create a set of International and National Brain Decoding Centers at which cutting-edge recording technologies and expertise on analyzing large datasets analyses can be made readily available to the entire community of neuroscientists who can apply and schedule to perform cutting-edge research. BRAIN project, Brain Decoding Project, brain activity map, learning and memory, episodic memory, semantic knowledge, imagination, concepts, fear conditioning, earthquake experiences, neural code Citation: Tsien J Z, Li M, Osan R, et al. On brain activity mapping: Insights and lessons from Brain Decoding Project to map memory patterns in the hippocampus. Donald Hebb [1] postulated that information processing in the brain may involve the coordinated activity of large numbers of neurons, or cell assemblies. Brain researchers have been pursuing this idea from the computational and cellular perspective, but the progress has remained embar-
doi:10.1007/s11427-013-4521-1 pmid:23900568 fatcat:otyajopejzf4dooxqgzsdjg7e4