Population-level analysis of neural activity during flexible learning of goal-directed actions

A core function of the brain is to transform sensory information into useful behavior, while allowing for some degree of flexibility to adapt to an ever-changing environment. However, the precise mechanisms by which sensory representations are translated into actions, and the factors that enable this flexibility, remain poorly understood. In the broader project, we are interested in how two different sensory stimuli that ultimately lead to the same action are represented in the dorsal striatum (dStr), a brain region implicated in the learning of goal-directed actions and in action selection, and how these representations change during acquisition and reversal. In this student project, you will work on one specific subquestion in depth and gain hands-on experience in analysing neural data at the population level.