Energy consumption

…exhibits a favorable tradeoff between energy consumption and downstream classification p

Brains are energy-hungry and evolution has driven them to work in an energy-efficient manner. In food restriction experiments, Padamsey et al. [1] have recently observed that individual neurons trade off energy consumption and information transmission. Specifically, neurons appear to reduce energy consumption by changing their integration properties through the adaptation of membrane resistance, resting potential, and synaptic efficacies, which comes at the cost of reduced information transmission. Furthermore, they found that individual neurons assume a broad range of values of these paramete

Our group is interested in discovering design principles that govern the structure and function of neurons and neural circuits. We record from well-defined neurons, mainly in flies’ visual systems, to measure the molecular and cellular factors that determine relevant measures of performance, such as representational capacity, dynamic range and accuracy. We combine this empirical approach with modelling to see how the basic elements of neural systems (ion channels, second messengers systems, membranes, synapses, neurons, circuits and codes) combine to determine performance. We are investigating