Neuronal mechanisms underlying contextual interactions in the visual system

Salk Institute For Biological Studies, La Jolla CA

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the fundamental unanswered questions of sensory biology is how information provided by individual neurons within the brain is linked into a coherent whole. Individual visually responsive neurons only respond to stimulation over a limited portion of the visual image known as the receptive field. The proposed research addresses the question of how the visual system integrates this limited information into an accurate representation of that world. Specifically, this research focuses on the ability of the visual system to selectively integrate information that arises from the same visual object. The conventional view has been that visually responsive neurons have relatively fixed neuronal properties that are stimulus independent. Based on recent discoveries, this research hypothesizes instead that neurons adapt their response properties such that they selectively integrate only that information that arises from the same perceptual object. This research explores this hypothesis as it applies to the perception of visual motion and depth. The ability to appropriately integrate visual information is intrinsic to normal visual perception and cognition, and disruptions of that ability accompany ageing and mental pathologies such as schizophrenia. This research thus promises to provide insight into normal mental function and is pertinent to developing treatments of mental pathologies. The long term goal of this project is to provide insight into the neural events that underlie our perception of the world. Our detailed understanding of the brain mechanisms that underlie normal perception will ultimately aid the treatment and prevention of neurological and psychiatric disorders. These aims are pertinent to the development of prosthetic and behavioral therapies for the visually handicapped.