An attempt to unify diverse forms of perceptual memory
Description
This seminar will be held virtually. Click here to attend.
Webinar url: https://mit.zoom.us/j/96488797782
Perceptual memory – shorthand for the process of extracting meaningful information from a stream of sensory data, and then experiencing, storing, recalling and acting upon that information – continues to enjoy a period of fast- paced research. However, research lines tend to custom-build a framework around a single stimulus feature in the context of a single behavioral task. Will the posited mechanisms hold up under different conditions? Based on preliminary experiments, I will try to unify diverse forms of perceptual memory into a general framework with deeper explanatory power. We have developed a library of tactile behaviors: the vibration stimulus set serves as the “raw material” from which the brain generates distinct percepts; the rat acts upon these percepts in multiple behavioral paradigms. The main hypothesis is centered on integration time scales in cortex. Upon processing a stream of sensory information, percepts of various stimulus features are generated in cortical modules according to the modules’ intrinsic integration time constants. Interactions between these modules, again governed by time constants, allow the network to flexibly engage in diverse behaviors, for instance, working memory and reference memory.
Speaker Bio
I am a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste Italy (known by its Italian acronym, SISSA). I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1984 and a PhD in Neurobiology from the University of North Carolina in 1989. I was a postdoctoral fellow with Ford Ebner at Brown University and then an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University before moving to SISSA to create the Tactile Perception and Learning Laboratory in 1996. My main interest is to specify the relationship between neuronal activity and perception. The research is carried out mostly in the tactile whisker system in rodents, but some experiments attempt to generalize the principles found in the whisker system to the processing of information in the human tactile sensory system.
Outside my research activities, I am vice-Director of the university and delegate for international initiatives. I continually try to get young people interested in neuroscience through international courses; for the same reason, I co-authored the introductory book, From Neuron to Brain (5th edition, 2012; 6th edition, 2020).