The role

Behavioral studies have shown that mice can form social memories, i.e.,  to remember familiar conspecifics. Optogenetic studies have demonstrated  that assemblies of neurons in hippocampal ventral CA1 (vCA1) constitute  a primary site of social memory. However, vCA1 contains a diversity of  neuronal cell types with diverse functions and cellular targets, and the  identity(ies) of cell types involved in social interaction remains  unresolved. This postdoc project aims at determining which vCA1 cell  types encode social interaction and how this encoding is performed. We  will combine intersectional genetics and optogenetics with a  last-generation miniature microscope to record and manipulate the  calcium dynamics — as a proxy for neuronal activity — of different vCA1  cell types in awake mice during a social interaction task.  State-of-the-art computational methods will quantitatively correlate  mouse behavior and neural activity to disentangle and model encoding of  social interaction at both single cell and population levels.