SMS scnews item created by Martin Wechselberger at Thu 21 Aug 2008 1510
Type: Seminar
Distribution: World
Expiry: 27 Aug 2008
Calendar1: 27 Aug 2008 1405-1455
CalLoc1: Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre
Auth: wm@p6283.pc.maths.usyd.edu.au

# Applied Maths Seminar: Solomon -- What does the eye tell the brain?

This is an old question, but still unanswered.  To gain some insight we have been
measuring the responses of nerve cells early in the visual pathway, in the lateral
geniculate nucleus of the thalamus.  The two major pathways from retina to visual cortex
are segregated at the level of the LGN and we have exploited this to measure the
responses of cells in each pathway.  The basic visual stimulus consists a 16x16 grid of
pixels, where the intensity of each pixel is drawn from a Gaussian distribution and
updated randomly every 30 ms.  We would like to use the response to this stimulus to
determine what information the LGN provides to visual cortex, and whether the different
pathways provide information about different aspects of the stimulus.  In this seminar I
will introduce the theme and some of our results, as well as our preliminary analyses
using an optimal linear decoder.

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/AppliedSeminar/abstracts/2008/solomon.html

I would like to encourage the Statistics group to come to this seminar because it may
lead to interdisciplinary collaboration with Dr. Solomon’s group (Physiology).


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