Topic: sensory cortex

Pyramidal neurons have apical dendrites that are both physically and electrically segregated from their cell bodies. In sensory cortex, these apical dendrites receive primarily top-down signals from associative and motor regions, while the cell bodies and nearby dendrites of these same pyramidal neurons are mostly targeted by bottom-up or locally recurrent inputs from the sensory periphery. Due to these differences, a number of theories in computational neuroscience postulate a unique role for apical dendrites in shaping sensory processing and plasticity in the face of new or surprising stimul

To generate brain circuits that are both flexible and stable requires the coordination of powerful developmental mechanisms acting at different scales, including activity-dependent synaptic plasticity and changes in single neuron properties. The brain prepares to efficiently compute information and reliably generate behavior during early development without any prior sensory experience but through patterned spontaneous activity. After the onset of sensory experience, ongoing activity continues to modify sensory circuits, and plays an important functional role in the mature brain. Using quantit

Regulation of information flow in the brain is critical for many forms of behavior. In the process of sensory based decision-making, decisions about future actions are held in memory until enacted, making them potentially vulnerable to distracting sensory input. Therefore, gating of information flow from sensory to motor areas could protect memory from interference during decision-making, but the underlying network mechanisms are not understood. I will present our recent experimental and modeling work describing how information flow from the sensory cortex can be gated by state-dependent front