Home Department: Symbolic Systems
Mentor: Lu Chen (Neurosurgery and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences - Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences)

“Investigating the Rules of Engram Allocation in the Hippocampus”

Memories are stored across sparse ensembles of neurons, collectively called engrams. The hippocampal engram is believed to be the orchestral ensemble, eliciting memory recall by indexing engrams across brain structures. Julián will use in vivo longitudinal calcium imaging of the mouse hippocampus to investigate what features of neural activity before and during contextual fear conditioning influences its chances of being allocated to an engram containing the fear memory. He will use application of deep learning computational approaches, such as convolutional neural networks, to identify causal relationships between neural activity, engram allocation, and mouse behavior.