Friday, August 22, 2025 8/22/2025

A Control Theoretic Approach to Addressing Hippocampal Function

Award Number: R01NS102537
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2017
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 11/30/2028

Group Awards By:

View Award Description

A Control Theoretic Approach to Addressing Hippocampal Function - Understanding the interplay between sensory input, endogenous neural dynamics, and behavioral output is key to understanding how the brain works at the level of neural computation. Hippocampal place cells are an ideal system to investigate this closed-loop interaction, as they combine input from self-motion cues and external landmarks to continuously update a dynamic neural network that creates an internal representation of location on a cognitive map. The normal functioning of this system is critical for such cognitive processes as flexible navigation, imagining the future, and autobiographical (episodic) memory. Animals can localize themselves by keeping track of their movements and continuously updating their location on their cognitive map based on these movements—a process called “path integration.” In order for this updating to coincide with the animal's actual displacement in the world, the relationship between physical movement and position updating on the map must be fine-tuned. Previous work in a novel virtual- reality environment demonstrated that external landmarks serve as a teaching signal to guide this fine- tuning process through visual experience—a process called “path integration gain recalibration.” The present proposal seeks an in-depth understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms that drive this previously unknown degree of plasticity in path integration dynamics, and how these mechanisms support navigation. Attractor neural network models provide a compelling framework for understanding the internal neural dynamic mechanisms underlying path integration. However, present versions of these models do not capture the path-integration plasticity. Moreover, studying the nonlinear dynamics of how visual inputs interact with the attractor network can provide important insights into how the brain creates stable spatial representations that allow flexible solutions to spatial behavioral tasks. Principles and analytical techniques of control-systems engineering will be applied to experiments that record the activity of spatially tuned neurons from the hippocampus and related brain regions of rats to address a series of both hypothesis-driven and discovery-driven aims: in Aims 1 and 2 we will investigate neurophysiological mechanisms and behavioral consequences of the plasticity of the path integration computation and in Aims 3 and 4 we will investigate the signals (such as error signals) that underlie the interactions between landmarks and path integration in the hippocampus that likely drive this plasticity. These experiments will provide fundamental insight into how the brain computes representations of the spatiotemporal context of an organism's experience, which is thought to constitute the framework that the brain uses to organize, interrelate, and bind the various aspects of an experience and store them as a coherent memory. Such insight will help understand how neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias, produce the devastating loss of cognitive function that is the hallmark of these diseases.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $526,277 )
2025	2025	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	001	7	8/5/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$52,627
2025	2025	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	7	11/25/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$473,650
														Subtotal = $526,277

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $526,277 )
2024	2024	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	001	6	12/22/2023	COMPETING CONTINUATION	$526,277
2024	2021	THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	5	12/12/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $526,277

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $382,514 )
2021	2021	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	5	5/3/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$382,514
														Subtotal = $382,514

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $382,514 )
2020	2020	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	4	4/16/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$382,514
														Subtotal = $382,514

Issue Date FY: 2019 ( Subtotal = $382,514 )
2019	2019	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	3	4/19/2019	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$382,514
														Subtotal = $382,514

Issue Date FY: 2018 ( Subtotal = $416,766 )
2018	2018	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	2	4/26/2018	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$416,766
														Subtotal = $416,766

Issue Date FY: 2017 ( Subtotal = $413,833 )
2017	2017	JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, THE	3400 N CHARLES ST	BALTIMORE	MD	21218	BALTIMORE CITY	USA	Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders	000	1	7/21/2017	NEW	$413,833
														Subtotal = $413,833

Grand Total All Awards = $3,030,695

Top

All Categories

About

Search

Reports

Data Submission

Award Information

A Control Theoretic Approach to Addressing Hippocampal Function

Award Number: R01NS102537

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2017

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 11/30/2028

Federal Websites

Department of Health & Human Services

HHS Operating Divisions

HHS Staff Divisions

Download A Document Viewer