Date : 01/02/2011

Laboratory
Unité de Neurosciences, Information et Complexité CNRS UPR3293
1 avenue de la Terrasse 91190 Gif sur Yvette
Director : Yves Frégnac

PhD Supervisor
Team : Traitement sensoriel, neuromodulation et plasticité neuronale
Daniel Shulz (team leader)
email : Cet e-mail est protégé contre les robots collecteurs de mails, votre navigateur doit accepter le Javascript pour le voir
phone : +33 1 69 82 34 00

Subjects / Tools-Methodologies
1 : Sensory Physiology/Electrophysiology
2 : Neuronal coding/White noise analysis
3 : Functional plasticity/Whole cell patch recordings

Website : www.unic.cnrs-gif.fr

Summary of lab's interests

Using the barrel cortex of the rat as a system model, our research is centered on the study of neuronal processes responsible for the coding of sensory information and perception, as well as their regulation through the interaction of the animal with the environment. We are interested in the propagation and integration of neuronal information in the primary somatosensory cortex and the emergence of collective properties in response to spatially distributed stimuli on the receptor surface. In addition, we study the functional and synaptic adaptation described by Hebbian and non-Hebbian plasticity algorithms. We include in this research, the study of permissive factors linked to the attentional and behavioral state of the animal which are mediated by ascending neuromodulatory systems. For more information see : http://www.unic.cnrs-gif.fr/teams/Research%20group%20of%20Daniel%20Shulz

Summary of project

Expectancy is a major function of the nervous system that prepares the organism to react in a meaningful way to sensory stimulation. Depending on the local statistics of patterned sensory stimuli, the central nervous system shows preparedness for expected inputs. Expectancy thus allows the system to respond -or not- in a specific time window by taking into account the recent presentations of a similar sensory context. Expectancy processes have a wide spectrum of applications: from the optimization of sensory signal treatment in a noisy environment to the detection of unexpected sensory inputs and triggering of appropriate behavioral responses. Our working hypothesis is that anticipation of a certain sensory input is an active process that is reflected in the behavioral as well as in central physiological signals. Consequently, the primary interest of our project is to explore the way by which stimulus timing properties and spatial structure control the emergence of prospective judgments. To study this, we propose to use controlled sensory inputs to the tactile vibrissal system of the rat (see Jacob et al., 2008 Neuron 60:1112-25) in order to generate short-term expectancies and reveal the neural mechanism responsible for them through electrophysiological multi-site multi-single unit recordings and intracellular recordings.