summary: The OpenScope program is investigating neural activity through four new projects, exploring topics such as the effects of psilocybin, perception of motion, recognition of visual textures, and subtle changes in appearance.
By using advanced imaging techniques in mice, researchers aim to understand how the brain processes these complex functions. The program provides global access to neuroscience research data. Research findings may lead to advances in the understanding and treatment of brain disorders.
Key Facts:
- Hallucinogenic Effects: They study how psilocybin affects brain activity at a cellular level.
- Visual: It explores how the brain processes the perception of movement and texture.
- Open Science: OpenScope provides global access to cutting-edge neuroscience research data.
sauce: Allen Institute
How do neurons respond to magic mushrooms? What happens in the brain when we see movement or recognize the grain pattern on a piece of wood? How do our brains track subtle changes in a friend’s appearance over time?
The Allen Institute has launched four projects to explore these questions through its shared neuroscience observatory, OpenScope: Just as astronomers use several well-equipped observatories to study the universe, the OpenScope program allows neuroscientists around the world to propose and lead experiments in the Allen Brain Observatory pipeline.
All research will be freely and openly available to anyone working on open questions of neural activity in health and disease.
Now in its sixth year, OpenScope aims to “pioneering new models in neuroscience,” says Dr. Jérôme Lecoq, an associate investigator at the Allen Institute.
“Our platform enhances data capture and global sharing, while enabling individual laboratories to use it for their own scientific research,” said Lecoq, who co-leads OpenScope with Christoph Koch.
“We aim to combine the best of both worlds: focused questions addressed by passionate teams and sophisticated platforms driven by experienced experimenters. This is our vision for the future of neuroscience.”
Psychedelic Science
One of this year’s OpenScope projects will explore how psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in “magic mushrooms,” alters brain activity at a cellular level. Known for inducing intense psychedelic experiences in humans, the compound will be used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying changes in cognition and perception.
Scientists will use advanced recording techniques in mice to observe how neurons change their communication under the influence of psilocybin, and how these changes affect the brain’s ability to process and make predictions about sensory information, which is crucial for understanding how perception is constructed.
“Our interest in these compounds goes beyond their potential clinical applications,” said Dr. Roberto De Filippo, a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University Berlin.
“We believe that uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying that effect could provide fundamental insights into the processes governing perception, cognition, and consciousness itself.”
The project is led by de Filippo, Dr. Torben Ott from Humboldt University Berlin and Dr. Dietmar Schmitz from the Charité University School of Medicine Berlin.
The past subtly shapes our worldview
We often miss the gradual changes in people we see every day. We only notice the difference when we look at old photos or meet up with a friend we haven’t seen in a while. Even though these changes are mostly invisible, our brains are constantly updating our memory with these details.
The 2024 OpenScope project aims to uncover the neural basis of these updates: using the Allen Brain Observatory platform, researchers will analyze brain activity in mice to understand how the brain’s visual system responds to changes over time.
Traditionally, neuroscientists thought that the visual system only processed incoming sensory information, but recent evidence suggests that the visual system also stores visual memories and uses them to predict what we will see next.
“We want to understand how such memories affect the perception of real-world vision and what role different brain regions play in this process,” said Dr Yaniv Ziv, Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
“By understanding this, we aim to determine whether these memories affect the flexibility or rigidity of visual processing. For example, are our brains more or less likely to adapt to new visual information if we have seen something similar before?”
The project is led by Ziv, Daniel Deitch, Dr. Alon Rubin and Itay Talpir of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Uncovering how the brain perceives movement
How does the brain perceive objects moving around us? The 2024 OpenScope project aims to unravel the mysteries of this fundamental process by studying motion perception in the mouse visual cortex. Previous studies have identified brain regions that respond to different types of motion, but the underlying neural circuits are still not fully understood.
The project involves using a microscope to simultaneously observe the activity of many neurons in different parts of the visual cortex over a period of several weeks.
The team hopes to characterize the neuronal representation of movement across brain regions and cell types and understand the specific circuits that support it. Insights gained from this study could have broader implications, as the same cell types and circuits are found throughout the cortex.
“If we can understand how these circuits process information in the visual system, it becomes more likely that the same principles apply throughout the brain,” says Dr. Julia Veit., Professor at the University of Freiburg.
The project is led by Veit, Dr. Henning Sprekeler of the Technical University of Berlin, and Dr. Yael Oran of the University of Freiburg.
Seeing the patterns around us
Our brains instantly recognize the myriad of complex visual textures that surround us, from the intricate patterns on a butterfly’s wings to the grain of a tree. But how does the brain achieve this incredible ability to recognize visual images?
The OpenScope project will train mice to distinguish textures while monitoring neural activity in their visual cortex, linking neural responses to perception.
The main goals are to determine why certain textures are easily recognized while others are difficult to recognize, and to map how different brain regions interact to transform visual input into a coherent representation that guides behavior.
These findings could reveal core principles of how the brain derives understanding from our visual world, the researchers say, but the scale and complexity of the work will require more tools and resources than are available in a typical laboratory setting.
“Tapping into the Allen Brain Observatory not only expands the scope and reach of our project several-fold, but it also allows us to compare and contextualize it with all the other open science projects they have led over the last decade,” said Dr. Federico Bolaños, Lead Data Scientist at the University of British Columbia.
“As has happened in other fields, such as high-energy physics and astronomy, systems neuroscience research needs to move from individual laboratories to larger, interconnected communities where we make progress together.”
The project is led by Bolaños, Dr. Timothy Murphy of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Javier Orlandi of the University of Calgary.
Funding: Research described in this article was supported by Grant Number U24NS113646 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or its affiliated agencies.
About this Open Science and Neuroscience Research News
author: Peter Kim
sauce: Allen Institute
contact: Peter Kim – Allen Institute
image: Image courtesy of Neuroscience News
