BMI Seminar // Analysing neuronal response dynamics and heterogeneity in the rodent whisker syste
Event details
| Date | 07.06.2017 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Miguel Maravall, Sussex Neuroscience, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
To make sense of the world around us, the brain must discriminate stimuli that are structured in space and time. In the tactile system, information about the identity of a stimulus is collected as a series of events (contacts, vibrations…) concatenated over time. The ability to encode individual events faithfully and precisely is central to tactile function. Work from my lab investigates principles of sensory encoding that underlie these capacities, using the rodent whisker system as a model. Neurons in the whisker system are sensitive to features of whisker motion over time; at each stage in this sensory pathway, different neurons are selective to distinct features, giving rise to rich and diverse population codes. In the whisker primary somatosensory cortex, cells selective to different stimulus dynamical features are interspersed in space. Neuronal diversity underpins a robust collective representation of texture.
These findings have implications for how temporally patterned sensory stimuli are processed. To explore this, we have recently developed a novel sequence discrimination task. We have found that mice as well as humans can distinguish between stimuli that differ only in their temporal patterning. In this talk I will give an overview of our work and detail our latest findings.
These findings have implications for how temporally patterned sensory stimuli are processed. To explore this, we have recently developed a novel sequence discrimination task. We have found that mice as well as humans can distinguish between stimuli that differ only in their temporal patterning. In this talk I will give an overview of our work and detail our latest findings.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- EPF SV BMI Host : C. Petersen