Topic: primary sensory cortices

Columnar organization is the hallmark of mature visual cortex in primates and carnivores, and is often assumed to be unique to those areas. Such an organization is already evident in the developing visual cortex (V1) well before eye-opening, where correlated modular spontaneous activity predicts future sensory-evoked representations. The multiple computational models proposed to account for this modular activity suggest several biologically plausible regimes which can produce modular activity and long-range correlations. Notably, these potential mechanisms are highly unlikely to be specific in

A central interest in neuroscience is understanding how the brain produces and orchestrates behavior. Our group studies these topics in rats, utilizing recent advances in tracking technology and analytic tools to quantify and explore behavior in naturalistic, unrestrained contexts. Previous publications from the group describe robust postural and behavioral representations in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), frontal motor cortex and primary sensory cortices (Mimica et al., 2018, Mimica, Tombaz et al., 2023). To better understand how neuronal populations integrate active sensory input to in

“Surprising” sensory stimuli trigger a large and widespread electrocortical activity in the mammal brain – the vertex potential – that is coupled with marked changes in behavioral output. It is, however, still unclear how “surprise” is represented at different hierarchical levels of cortical processing, as well as at different spatiotemporal scales, ranging from individual neurons to large cortical areas. Also, if and how surprise at individual neuron level relates to the widespread surprise-related vertex potential widely studied in humans remains elusive.To answer those questions, we recorde