Our main interest is the early visual system and and how it does what it does. We seek to understand how the early visual system is wired up and to find simple mathematical expressions to describe its output.
In particular, we study the lateral geniculate neurons (LGN) and the primary visual cortex (V1). These are the two brain structures that connect the eyes to the portion of cerebral cortex that deals with vision.
A measure of success for our research is whether we can predict the responses of neurons in the early visual system to arbitrary, complex visual stimuli. For an example of these responses listen to the spikes of an LGN neuron in response to a cartoon.
One of our longstanding interests is pattern adaptation, which is always a good excuse to show a funny demo. Look at the rotating spiral for 30 s or more, and then look at something you know well, like the back of your hand.
The tools that we employ are mainly neurophysiological, with some help from psychophysics and modeling. To perform neurophysiology experiments we use multi-electrode recordings and optical imaging of voltage sensitive dyes.
Through recordings and imaging, we measure the dynamics of population responses, both in response to visual stimulation and during spontaneous activity.
The laboratory is funded by the Medical Research Council, the National Eye Institute and the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. In the past we have also been funded by the Swiss National Foundation, the Human Frontiers Science Program, and the James S McDonnell Foundation.