Our research focuses on how neurons and their networks accomplish functional computations, a.k.a. the biophysics of computation, in particular in the early visual system. These studies rely on an interdisciplinary approach based on electrophysiology and computational modeling, and can be divided into two general areas:

Synaptic integration and spike generation in single neurons

Each neuron in the brain instantiates a complex mapping from typically thousands of synaptic and many contextual (e.g. pancrinic) inputs, to the eventual action potential output. The biophysical structure underlying this transformation includes the non-linear interactions between synaptic inputs across neuron’s dendritic tree, the neuron’s voltage and second-messenger dependent membrane channels and, finally, the intracellular systems that regulate synaptic and membrane properties. Our work aims to characterize this mapping in neurons of the retina, hippocampus and cortex, with particular attention to the integrated analysis of the responses of neurons to both artificial (electrophysiological) and functional (e.g. visual) stimuli.

Functional architecture of cortical and peripheral brain regions

Sensory systems in the brain are characterized by the notion of the receptive field, which describes the filter properties of single cells that discriminate specific features in a given sensory modality. Our research focuses on the early visual system, including the retina, the lateral geniculate nucleus and the visual cortex, where we aim to describe the contributions of synaptic connectivity and intrinsic cellular properties that underlie classical and non-classical receptive field characteristics.

Description français (par J.J. Perrier)

Selected Publications

Team Members

• Lyle J. Graham, PhD

• Daniele Marinazzo, PhD

• Anton Chizhov, PhD

• Adrien Schramm, MS

• David Dubayle, PhD

• Mahmut Ozer, PhD

• Ricardo del Abajo, PhD (former member)

• Thomas Gener (MS, former member)

Collaborators

• Johan Storm, MD-PhD, University of Oslo

• Koen Vervaeke, PhD, University College, London

• Eduardo Fernandez, MD-PhD, University Miguel Hernandez

• Idan Segev, PhD, Hebrew University

Positions Available

The Surf-Hippo Neuron Simulation System