Browsing by Author "Freeman, Jeremy"

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    Brain-wide mapping of neural activity controlling zebrafish exploratory locomotion.
    (eLife, 2016-03-22) Dunn, Timothy W; Mu, Yu; Narayan, Sujatha; Randlett, Owen; Naumann, Eva A; Naumann, Eva A; Yang, Chao-Tsung; Schier, Alexander F; Schier, Alexander F; Freeman, Jeremy; Engert, Florian; Ahrens, Misha B
    In the absence of salient sensory cues to guide behavior, animals must still execute sequences of motor actions in order to forage and explore. How such successive motor actions are coordinated to form global locomotion trajectories is unknown. We mapped the structure of larval zebrafish swim trajectories in homogeneous environments and found that trajectories were characterized by alternating sequences of repeated turns to the left and to the right. Using whole-brain light-sheet imaging, we identified activity relating to the behavior in specific neural populations that we termed the anterior rhombencephalic turning region (ARTR). ARTR perturbations biased swim direction and reduced the dependence of turn direction on turn history, indicating that the ARTR is part of a network generating the temporal correlations in turn direction. We also find suggestive evidence for ARTR mutual inhibition and ARTR projections to premotor neurons. Finally, simulations suggest the observed turn sequences may underlie efficient exploration of local environments.
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    Mapping nonlinear receptive field structure in primate retina at single cone resolution.
    (eLife, 2015-10-30) Freeman, Jeremy; Field, Greg D; Li, Peter H; Greschner, Martin; Gunning, Deborah E; Mathieson, Keith; Sher, Alexander; Litke, Alan M; Paninski, Liam; Simoncelli, Eero P; Chichilnisky, EJ
    The function of a neural circuit is shaped by the computations performed by its interneurons, which in many cases are not easily accessible to experimental investigation. Here, we elucidate the transformation of visual signals flowing from the input to the output of the primate retina, using a combination of large-scale multi-electrode recordings from an identified ganglion cell type, visual stimulation targeted at individual cone photoreceptors, and a hierarchical computational model. The results reveal nonlinear subunits in the circuity of OFF midget ganglion cells, which subserve high-resolution vision. The model explains light responses to a variety of stimuli more accurately than a linear model, including stimuli targeted to cones within and across subunits. The recovered model components are consistent with known anatomical organization of midget bipolar interneurons. These results reveal the spatial structure of linear and nonlinear encoding, at the resolution of single cells and at the scale of complete circuits.