Studying the neural circuit mechanisms of cognition using rodents

Understanding how neural circuits of the brain support cognition is a key goal of neuroscience. Progress had been very difficult, largely due to the sheer complexity of the brain, with its myriad simultaneously interacting brain regions, neurons, and neuronal components. Yet in recent years neuroscientists have been experiencing a boom in optimism and a sense of accelerating progress. I will outline some of the factors that are contributing to this sense of excitement. I will then describe some specific examples from my own lab, in which we use high-throughput behavioral training of rodents, in combination with computational modeling and modern experimental recording and perturbation techniques, to explore the neural circuit basis of working memory and cognitive control.