Research

Isolating perception in the cortex

How sensory stimuli become perceived is one of the greatest mysteries in neuroscience. At its most fundamental level is the question of why is it that some stimuli are perceived at all, enabling the subject to report on their presence, while other stimuli remain subliminal. The goal of this research is to develop new behavioral paradigms that isolate perception-related activity and combine these paradigms with neural recording and manipulation approaches to uncover the mechanism by which stimuli become perceived by the brain.

Simultaneous measurement of excitation and inhibition

The aim of this research is to investigate the interplay between excitatory and inhibitory inputs in the cortex of the mouse. Current methods of intracellular recording, such as voltage and current clamp have been used to measure inhibitory and excitatory inputs in isolation. However, Both methods display a similar issue as they provide a weighted average of the inputs over many trials. This poses a problem since neuronal activity dynamically fluctuates as a function of time. We developed a new analytical framework for simultaneous measurements of both the excitatory and inhibitory neuronal inputs during a single trial under current clamp recording.

Rules for object representation in neurons

The cortex takes part in perception, action, and object representation. Large areas of the mammalian cortex contain neurons that respond to physical objects. However, the precise mechanisms underlying pattern detection in the cortex remain elusive. We hypothesize that a neuron will learn to detect repeated patterns impinging on its dendrites using simple Hebbian rules. To test the hypothesis, we will use two-layer uni-directional neuronal culture, with which we will precisely control the activity patterns of the input layer using optogenetics and read the output layer activity using calcium imaging. We predict that specific neurons will “learn” to respond to a particular repeated pattern and be insensitive to other random activation patterns.

Interhemispheric communication

We wish to understand both spontaneous communication (without sensory stimulation) and the dynamic integration of bilateral sensory inputs. Specifically, we aim to study how callosal activity and interhemispheric correlations depend on shifts in brain state and find what is the role of the corpus callsoum in coordinating bilateral sensory integration.

Audio-tactile multimodal integration

We discovered and developed an innovative way to research multi-sensory integration. We showed that when mice whisk against certain objects, the interaction creates an audible sound. This novel method allows us to investigate questions regarding sensory multi-modal integration in a behavior-oriented way.