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BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering

Understanding brain circuit dysfunction in amblyopia using large-scale multimodal recordings in a new visuomotor task.

Alternative title: Understanding brain circuit dysfunction in amblyopia using large-scale multimodal recordings in a new visuomotor task.

Awarded: NOK 3.0 mill.

Some theories about brain function consider the brain as a prediction machine. Based on previous experience, our brains may perform an "autocompletion" function during pretty much every thing we do, and perhaps, think. Here we will study amblyopia, or best known as "lazy eye" in a mouse model to better understand how neural circuits change during this condition, but also how our brain's prediction capacity is changed.

We aim to establish the role of predictive processing in neurodevelopmental disorders, specifically in one of the most studied contexts, amblyopia. We use a new visuomotor feedback task across high-visual-acuity preclinical species - cats -, rodents, and humans during large-scale activity readout via best-available methods (functional ultrasound imaging reaching 4 cm depth, mesoscale two-photon imaging, hdEEG) to 1) identify brain regions involved in visuomotor prediction in normal subjects, 2) determine the effect of amblyopia on prediction-related activity patterns, 3) develop functional network models to infer which brain regions and associated brain functions are restored or remain perturbed after amblyopia treatment, 4) validate results via optogenetic perturbation experiments in mice, 5) provide an EEG-based biomarker with high discriminative power across normal vision and different stages of amblyopia.

Funding scheme:

BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering