Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 3: Neuronal Systems

BP 3.1: Hauptvortrag

Montag, 25. Februar 2008, 14:00–14:30, C 243

How to Take a Quick Look---Rapid Neural Coding of Visual Information in the Retina — •Tim Gollisch — Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, München-Martinsried

The neural processing and computation that underlies our visual perception begins in the retina, a neural network at the back of the eyeball. Here, all visual information available to the central brain is encoded into patterns of electrical pulses (``spikes''). Elucidating the nature of this neural code forms a central goal in visual neuroscience. A particular challenge for natural visual processing arises from frequent eye movements (``saccades''), which bring a new image onto the retina and initiate a short episode of visual processing. In this talk, I will discuss recent findings that specific retinal neurons encode the structure of a suddenly appearing image in the relative timing of their spikes. The characteristics of this neural code and its underlying circuitry are studied with a combination of experimental recordings of retinal spikes under visual stimulation and mathematical modeling. These retinal signals may serve as a channel for rapid and robust information transmission from the eye to the brain.