Visual information

Kenneth Harris discusses what simultaneous recordings from many cells reveal about visual information encoded by neuronal populations.

The involvement of early visual cortex during the short-term maintenance of visual information has been demonstrated in human fMRI studies [1,2]. However, evidence for sustained, stimulus-related neuronal firing in primate V1 is limited [3,4]. Recently, fading traces of visual information have been shown in the population code of primate V1 neurons for ~1.5 seconds after visual stimulus presentation in delayed match to sample and attention tasks [5]. The relatively long time-course of these fading memories make it unlikely to be a neural correlate of iconic memory [6], but may be related to “f

Sensory perception allows us to receive and integrate information from the environment, a process that starts right from birth. Indeed, newborns can interact with their environment and perform sensorimotor tasks soon after birth, without any previous experience of patterned sensory input. Understanding how neurons assemble into circuits that developmentally prepare to encode visual information accordingly to arousal states is still poorly understood and is likely to provide critical insight not only into how these circuits function, but also how they malfunction in various neurological conditi

Visual Working Memory (VWM) is responsible for retaining and manipulating visual information. Accordingly, most of past-research has focused on investigating these properties. This study examined VWM’s ability to encode the future, specifically, representing objects and events before they appear. Methods: In Experiment 1 participants performed a change-detection task with moving objects. In the critical condition, objects moved towards each other, then met to form a new conjunction representation, while in other conditions objects moved independently. We monitored the Contralateral Delay Activ

Previous studies have suggested that the relative importance associated with redundant sensory signals should depends only on their relative noisiness, so as to optimize movement precision (Maximum Likelihood Principle, MLP). As a consequence, whether a goal-oriented hand movement is performed in a seated or standing position should not affect the visuo-proprioceptive sensory weights. To test this hypothesis, we asked healthy subjects to perform visuo-manual coordination tasks both seated and standing. Using virtual reality and quantifying the deviation of the subjects’ motor responses due to

Decades of work has attempted to explain how the representation of visual information is transformed across stages of the cortical processing stream. In some cases, these transformations have been elucidated by insights into how the receptive field properties of individual neurons differ across areas. But the view provided by single neuron selectivity has struggled to explain the transformations occurring from early to mid-level cortex. An alternative, complementary approach is to study the representational geometry of neuronal populations. Though derived from individual neuronal selectivity,

…physiology, circuit function, and visual psychophysics. It is further supported by a normative theory explaining what the purpose is of processing visual information this way. Most new reports of retinal phenomena fit squarely within the standard mode

…for the perception and transmission of visual information. It consists of five different types of neurons that reproducibly laminate into three layers, a process of crucial importance for the organ’s function. Unsurprisingly, impaired fate decisions as well as impaired neuronal migrations and lamination lead to impaired retinal function. However, how processes are coordinated at the cellular and tissue level and how variable or robust retinal formation is, is currently still underexplored. In my lab, we a