The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $431,750 Project Grant (CFDA 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants) to the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) to investigate the role of the medial striatum in spatial sequence learning and its interaction with the hippocampus. The two-year study, running from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2025, aims to evaluate how the dorsomedial striatum contributes to the disambiguation of repeated spatial traversals that occur in distinct behavioral contexts. The research will explore the neural activity patterns in the hippocampus and dorsomedial striatum that enable the successful differentiation of similar events that take place in the same physical environment but are part of distinct episodic memories. The findings are expected to advance the understanding of the neural basis of episodic memory and its implications for neurological and mental health disorders.
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