Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA; Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 125 Paterson Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA; Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA; Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Curr Biol. 2024 Mar 25;34(6):1333-1340.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.004. Epub 2024 Feb 27.
Behavior differs across individuals, ranging from typical to atypical phenotypes. Understanding how differences in behavior relate to differences in neural activity is critical for developing treatments of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. One hypothesis is that differences in behavior reflect individual differences in the dynamics of how information flows through the brain. In support of this, the correlation of neural activity between brain areas, termed "functional connectivity," varies across individuals and is disrupted in autism, schizophrenia, and depression. However, the changes in neural activity that underlie altered behavior and functional connectivity remain unclear. Here, we show that individual differences in the expression of different patterns of cortical neural dynamics explain variability in both functional connectivity and behavior. Using mesoscale imaging, we recorded neural activity across the dorsal cortex of behaviorally "typical" and "atypical" mice. All mice shared the same recurring cortex-wide spatiotemporal motifs of neural activity, and these motifs explained the large majority of variance in cortical activity (>75%). However, individuals differed in how frequently different motifs were expressed. These differences in motif expression explained differences in functional connectivity and behavior across both typical and atypical mice. Our results suggest that differences in behavior and functional connectivity are due to changes in the processes that select which pattern of neural activity is expressed at each moment in time.
行为在个体之间存在差异，范围从典型表型到非典型表型。了解行为差异与神经活动差异之间的关系对于开发神经精神和神经发育障碍的治疗方法至关重要。一种假设是，行为差异反映了信息在大脑中流动的动态个体差异。支持这一观点的是，大脑区域之间的神经活动相关性，称为“功能连接”，在个体之间存在差异，并且在自闭症、精神分裂症和抑郁症中受到破坏。然而，导致行为和功能连接改变的神经活动变化仍不清楚。在这里，我们表明，不同皮质神经动力学模式表达的个体差异解释了功能连接和行为的可变性。使用中尺度成像，我们记录了行为“典型”和“非典型”小鼠背侧皮层的神经活动。所有小鼠都具有相同的皮层大范围时空神经活动模式，这些模式解释了皮质活动中绝大多数的变异性（>75%）。然而，个体在不同模式的表达频率上存在差异。这些模式表达的差异解释了典型和非典型小鼠的功能连接和行为差异。我们的结果表明，行为和功能连接的差异是由于选择在每个时间点表达哪种神经活动模式的过程发生了变化。
