Current Trends in Sensory Neuroscience

NRSC 7670 Advanced Topics: Current Trends in Sensory Neuroscience

Fall, 2005

Instructors: Dr Daniel J Tollin (P18-7120) Daniel.Tollin@uchsc.edu

Dr Nathan Schoppa (P18-7115) Nathan.Schoppa@uchsc.edu

Time: Thursday 2:00-3:30pm

Location: Physiology large conference room P18-7108

Course Objectives:

The primary objective of the course is to build a thorough understanding of the field of sensory neuroscience by critically reading and reviewing seminal or provocative journal articles. At the beginning of each semester a specific topic of discussion will be selected, and articles will then be chosen to explore this topic. This fall, the course will focus on the area of neural synchrony, both its underlying mechanisms as well as its function in sensory processing. A major emphasis of the course will be to cover all disciplines of sensory neuroscience (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.) through the discussion and presentation of papers, thus allowing the students to increase their knowledge beyond the scope of their own research fields.

Grading:

Students registered for credit will be expected to attend all class meetings, participate in all discussions in substantial and meaningful ways, and present at least one article (or group of articles when necessary) over the course of the semester. The course will meet at least every other week and is pass/fail. Presentations should be thorough and clear enough so that a participant need not have read the article before the class meeting in order to participate in the discussion; however, it is expected that each student will have read the required articles. The use of PowerPoint, simulations, and/or other multimedia by the presenters is encouraged.

Neural synchrony: mechanisms and functions

Thursday 9/8 Visual system: Retina

Schoppa & Tollin

Meister M, Lagnado L, and Baylor DA (1995) Concerted signaling by retinal ganglion cells. Science 270: 1207-1210.

Schnitzer MJ and Meister M (2003) Multineuronal firing patterns in the signal from eye to brain. Neuron 37: 499-511.

Supplementary material

Usrey WM and Reid RC. (1999) Synchronous activity in the visual system. Annu Rev Physiol. 61, 435-456. Review.

Brivanlou IH, Warland DK, and Meister M (1998) Mechanisms of concerted firing among retinal ganglion cells. Neuron 20, 527-539.

Nirenberg S, Carcieri SM, Jacobs AL, and Latham PE (2001) Retinal ganglion cells act largely as independent encoders. Nature 411, 698-701.

Thursday 9/22 Visual system: Lateral geniculate nucleus

Rebekah Vest

Usrey MW, Reppas JB, and Reid RC (1998) Paired-spike interactions and synaptic efficacy of retinal inputs to the thalamus. Nature 395: 384-387.

Usrey MW, Alonso J-M, and Reid RC (2000) Synaptic interactions between thalamic inputs to simple cells in cat visual cortex. J Neurosci 20:5461-5467.

Supplementary material

Alonso J-M, Usrey WM, and Reid RC (1996) Precisely correlated firing in cells of the lateral geniculate nucleus. Nature 383: 815-819.

Usrey WM (2002) Spike timing and visual processing in the retinogeniculocortical pathway. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 357:1729-1737. Review.

Thursday 10/6 Visual system: Cortex

Michael Gaffield

Gray, C.M., Konig, P., Engel, A.K., and Singer, W. (1989) Oscillatory responses in cat visual cortex exhibit inter-columnar synchronization which reflects global stimulus properties. Nature 338, 334-337.

Fries, P., Reynolds, J.H., Rorie, A.E., and Desimone, R. (2001) Modulation of oscillatory neuronal synchronization by selective visual attention. Science 291, 1560-1563.

Supplementary material

Gray CM, and Singer W (1989) Stimulus-specific neuronal oscillations in orientation columns of cat visual cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 86, 1698-1702.

Singer W (1999) Neuronal synchrony: a versatile code for the definition of relations? Neuron 24, 49-65.

Niebur E, Hsiao SS, and Johnson KO (2002) Synchrony: a neuronal mechanism for attentional selection? Curr Opin Neurobiol. 12, 190-194.

Thursday 10/20 Auditory system: Coincidence detection in the brainstem

Brian D Gulbransen

Carr CE and Konishi M (1990) A circuit for detection of interaural time differences in the brain stem of the barn owl. J Neurosci 10:3227-3246.

Agmon-Snir H, Carr CE, and Rinzel J (1998) The role of dendrites in auditory coincidence detection. Nature 393:268-272.

Supplementary material

Jeffress LA (1948) A place theory of sound localization. J Comp Physiol Psychol 41:35-39.

Joris PX, Smith PH, and Yin TCT (1998) Coincidence detection in the auditory system: 50 years after Jeffress. Neuron 21:1235-1238. Review.

Thursday 11/10 Olfactory system: Insect antennal lobe

Rob Hallock & Jennell Barrows

Laurent, G., and Davidowitz, H. (1994) Encoding of olfactory information with oscillating neural assemblies. Science 265, 1872-1875.

Stopfer M., Bhagavan, S., Smith, B.H., and Laurent, G. (1997) Impaired odour discrimination on desynchronization of odour-encoding neural assemblies. Nature 390, 70-74.

Supplementary material

Adrian, ED (1950) The electrical activity of the mammalian olfactory bulb. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 2, 377-388.

Friedrich RW, Stopfer M (2001) Recent dynamics in olfactory population coding. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 11, 468-474. Review.

Thursday 12/1 Olfactory system: Insect mushroom body

Wilder Doucette

Perez-Orive, J., Mazor, O., Turner, G.C., Cassenaer, S., Wilson, R.I., and Laurent, G. (2002) Oscillations and sparsening of odor representations in the mushroom body. Science 297, 359-365.

Perez-Orive, J., Bazhenov, M., and Laurent G. (2004) Intrinsic and circuit properties favor coincidence detection for decoding oscillatory input. J. Neurosci. 24, 6037-6047.

Supplementary material

Laurent G, MacLeod K, Stopfer M, and Wehr M. (1998) Spatiotemporal structure of olfactory inputs to the mushroom bodies. Learn Mem. 5, 124-132. Review.

MacLeod K, Backer A, and Laurent G. (1998) Who reads temporal information contained across synchronized and oscillatory spike trains? Nature 395, 693-698.

deCharms RC and Merzenich MM (1996) Primary cortical representation of sounds by the coordination of action-potential timing. Nature 381: 610-613.

Brosch M and Schreiner CE (1999) Correlations between neural discharges are related to receptive field properties in cat primary auditory cortex. E J Neurosci 11:3517-3530.