RhinalMultiSense is launching on May 1st 2020 and will run until April 30th 2022. The main aim of this project will be to unravel the circuits involved in multisensory integration in the mouse perirhinal cortex.
The perirhinal cortex lays on the lateral surface of the brain along the rhinal sulcus. The perirhinal cortex belongs to two cortical networks: it seats at the terminal point of the ventral visual stream where it is involved in object perception and recognition; and it belongs to the parahippocampal network where it represents a gateway for sensory information to the hippocampal formation through its projections to the lateral entorhinal cortex.
The perirhinal cortex receives information from all sensory cortices and behavioral evidence suggests that this information is used for object recognition. Moreover, perirhinal cortex has been shown to play a role in sensory transformations during a mutisensory object recognition task involving visuo-tactile cues.
The objectives of this project are:
- To describe the topographical organization of sensory inputs onto perirhinal cortex;
- To establish the network architecture for multisensory integration with cellular resolution.
This project will take advantage of state-of-the-art technologies for circuit dissection such as rabies tracing, chemogenetics, optogenetics, and engram technology.
This project is funded by the EuropeanUnion’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 885955.
Nigro lab 