Neurons in
the visual cortex respond selectively to particular features
or patterns in the visual world. The objective of our
research is to understand the cellular and circuit-level
properties that underlie this selectivity.
We employ two
approaches to this problem: a "bottom-up" approach in
which we try to understand the basic cellular and synaptic
building blocks of cortical function in an in vitro
slice preparation, and a "top-down" approach in which
we study the responses of neurons to sensory stimuli in
vivo.
This talk discussed
our ex-periments concerning the way in which successive
synaptic inputs are integrated over time, and the spatial
aspects of synaptic integration.
