NIAS Wednesday Discussion: "Neuronal Adaptations to Environmental Change" by Posina Venkata Rayudu, Lecture Hall, NIAS, 0930 hrs
NIAS Wednesday Discussion
Neuronal Adaptations to Environmental Change
Speaker
Posina Venkata Rayudu
Research Fellow, NIAS Consciousness Studies Programme, NIAS
Chairperson: Sisir Roy, T. V. Raman Pai Chair Visiting Professor,, Consciousness Studies Programme, NIAS, sisir.sisirroy@gmail.com
17th May, 2017, 9.30 am, Lecture Hall, NIAS
Abstract: Sensory systems face a dilemma: On the one hand it is imperative that sensory information be represented with high fidelity. On the other hand the brain has limited representational resources. The typical compromise is enhanced neuronal representation of frequently encountered stimuli. This enhancement may reflect calibration based on statistics of the sensory environment. We studied calibration as it applies to chromatic processing in the primate visual system. We examined two populations of neurons in primary visual cortex: red-green color-opponent neurons and non-opponent luminance cells. We found that color-opponent neurons, which provide outputs that finely distinguish colors varying around the mean chromaticity of the environment, undergo recalibrations of cone-specific inputs in response to long-term chromatic biases. By contrast, cone inputs to non-opponent neurons, which play no role in chromatic discrimination, remained unchanged. Our findings indicate that recalibration based on environmental statistics is an effective strategy to optimize encoding of sensory information.
About the Speaker: Mr. Posina Venkata Rayudu did extensive research in both experimental and theoretical neurosciences at Harvard Medical School, National Brain Research Centre, and The Salk Institute. He is currently a NIAS Consciousness Studies Programme Research Fellow.
All are cordially invited
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For further info, please contact Sangeetha Menon [prajnanata@gmail.com or smeno
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Date:
Wednesday, May 17, 2017