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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Neurobiology
Optogenetic Interrogation Of Primary Visual Cortex And Its Impact On Neural Coding And Behavior, Ariana R. Andrei
Optogenetic Interrogation Of Primary Visual Cortex And Its Impact On Neural Coding And Behavior, Ariana R. Andrei
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Understanding the mechanism by which the brain transforms simple sensory inputs into rich perceptual experiences is one of the great mysteries of systems neuroscience. Undoubtedly this involves the activity of large populations of interconnected neurons, but while the responses of individual neurons to a variety of sensory stimuli have been well-characterized, how populations of such neurons organize their activity to create our sensory perceptions is almost entirely unknown. To investigate this complex circuitry requires the ability to causally manipulate the activity of neural populations and monitor the resultant effects. Here we focus on primary visual cortex (V1), which has been …
On The Origin Of Sensory Errors, Jonathan R. Flynn
On The Origin Of Sensory Errors, Jonathan R. Flynn
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Estimation of perceptual variables is imprecise and prone to errors. Although the properties of these perceptual errors are well characterized, the physiological basis for these errors is unknown. One previously proposed explanation for these errors is the trial-by-trial variability of the responses of sensory neurons that encode the percept. Initially, it would seem that a complicated electrophysiological experiment would need to be performed to test this hypothesis. However, using a strong theoretical framework, I demonstrate that it is possible to determine statistical characteristics of the physiological mechanism responsible for perceptual errors solely from a behavioral experiment. The basis for this …