Neural Activity Simulation

Simulation Analysis of Neuron Firing Activity in Cerebellar Cells
for Learning and Extinction Evaluation

Project Report

This project was conducted in the Mauk lab at the Department of Neuroscience at The University of Texas at Austin.

Introduction

This project examines neuronal activity in the cerebellum during a classical conditioning trial. The question I will be investigating is how the rates of learning an association (acquisition) and rates of extinguishing the association (extinction) differ in cerebellar cells. I will be using datasets generated from a computational simulation developed by the lab of Dr. Michael Mauk. I chose this topic because I am interested in learning how a computational simulation can model the activities of neurons. Moreover, I’m interested to see how different cerebellar neurons act while it undergoes learning.

The simulation models the behavior of different neurons in the cerebellum during an eyelid conditioning trial, which is one of the widely used classical conditioning methods. The data I gathered from the simulation are raster files of spike activities from 2 different type of neurons (Purkinje cell, Deep Nucleus cell) over time, as the assocation is learned and extinguished. Each trial that the neurons undergo is either strengthening the learned association or weakening it. In my experiment, the first 500 trials were designed to strengthen the association (acquisition) and the following 500 trials were designed to weaken the association (extinction). In summary, my dataset includes activity of 2 different types of cerebellar neurons over 1000 trials. Within each trial, spike activity of all neurons are recorded for a certain period of time whose units will be in milliseconds.

With this data, I will be able to analyze the neuron activity and examine the rates of acquisition and extinction in the cerebellum. This project will allow me to gain a deeper understanding of computational simulation of neurons and answer the question of whether the pattern of acquisition and extinction shows a significant difference.