Laboratory for Behavioral Neurophysiology

Little is known about how neurons integrate feedback and feed forward information for animal behavior. To understand it, we focus on the causal relationship between behavior and neural activity at the single-cell, micro-circuit and network levels. We use multidisciplinary techniques including 2-photon microscopy, fiberoptic imaging, macro-brain imaging, optogenetic techniques and electrophysiological recordings, in awake and anesthetized animals. We are also interested in developing new techniques to discover novel neural activities that can be used for understanding brain functions and animal behavior.

Research Subjects

• Dendritic processing of feedback and feed forward information in vivo
• Dynamics of cortical micro-circuit
• Causal relationship between animal behavior and neural network activity
• Developing novel methods that are useful for seeing new phenomena

Publications

1. Lucy M.Palmer, Masanori Murayama, Matthew E. Larkum:
   "Inhibitory Regulation of Dendritic Activity in vivo."
   Front Neural Circuits. 2012;6:26, 2012
2. Lucy M.Palmer, Jan M.Schulz, Sean C.Murphy, Debora Ledergerber, Masanori Murayama, Matthew E. Larkum:
   "The Cellular Basis of GABAb-Mediated Interhemispheric Inhibition"
   Science 24;335(6071):989-93, 2012
3. Masanori Murayama and Matthew Larkum:
   "Fiber-Optic Calcium Monitoring of Dendritic Activity In Vivo"
   Cold Spring Harbor Protocols 1;2012(2):218-25, 2012
4. H. Lütcke*, M. Murayama*, T. Hahn, D.J. Margolis, S. Astori, S.M.A. Borgloh, W. Göbel, Y. Yang, W. Tang, S.: Kügler, R. Sprengel, T. Nagai, A. Miyawaki, M.E. Larkum, F. Helmchen, M.T. Hasan (* Equal contribution)
   "Optical recording of neuronal activity with a genetically-encoded calcium indicator in anesthetized and freely moving mice"
   Frontiers in Neural Circuits, 4;9
5. M. Murayama, E. Pérez-Garci, T. Nevian, T. Bock, W. Senn and M.E. Larkum:
   "Dendritic encoding of sensory stimuli controlled by deep cortical interneurons"
   Nature 457, p1137-1141, 2009
6. M. Murayama and M.E. Larkum:
   "In vivo dendritic calcium imaging with a fiberoptic periscope system"
   Nature Protocols 4, p1551-1559, 2009
7. M. Murayama and M.E. Larkum:
   "Enhanced dendritic activity in awake rats"
   Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106, p20482-20486, 2009
8. M. Murayama, E. Pérez-Garci, H-R. Lüscher and M.E. Larkum:
   "Fiberoptic system for recording dendritic calcium signals in layer 5 neocortical pyramidal cells in freely moving rats"
   Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, p1791-1805, 2007