Event:

I will give an overview of our lab’s modeling and experimental work on neural dynamics, mechanisms of attention selection, and neural coding. First, I will show data from cell-type-specific recordings from interneurons in primary visual cortex, showing the distinct synchronization patterns between different cell types. I will present a unified model of excitatory interactions with multiple interneuron types that explains numerous optogenetic perturbation findings and empirical findings; this model suggests distinct causal contributions of different interneuron types. Second, I will give a synthesis of our work on attentional mechanisms in the primate brain in relation to inter-areal communication and cell types. I will suggest a model in which attention selection depends on a late selection mechanism that depends on a switch in recurrent dynamics biased by modulatory top-down feedback, rather than an enhancement of inter-areal coupling mediated by synchrony. Third (if time permits), I will give an overview of the association of neural dynamics and sequences with visual encoding. These include the presence of temporal sequence information utilizing a broad frequency spectrum, with enhanced coding precision and stability vs. spike-count codes.