Spatiotemporal patterns of population activity in the rat barrel cortex

Abstract

Sensory-evoked neural activity is integrated in the cortex, to give rise to complex percepts. In the rodent barrel cortex, voltage-sensitive dye (VSD) imaging has revealed wavelike propagation of neuronal population activity, originating from one barrel and spreading throughout the barrel cortex. The goal of my thesis is to test the hypothesis that this propagation may be correlated with the computations underlying sensory integration. This could potentially provide evidence for the long-standing postulate that this type of population activity may potentially contribute to cortical computations.