Explorations of a Simple Visual Cortex
Prof Gilles Laurent, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt/Main
Monday, 19 May 2014, 12pm to 1pm
The Oxford Martin School, Old Indian Institute, 34 Broad Street, Oxford
Gilles Laurent will be presenting the recent experimental work hislab has undertaken to try and decipher visual computation in reptilian cortex, a three-layer structure close to mammalian paleo- and archi-cortices, probably close to the dorsal pallial structure that existed in their common ancestor some 320 million years ago. Their approach is to develop and combine behavioral, electrophysiological, optical, electron microscopic and molecular techniques on a system that presents a number of experimental advantages, and to eventually - although not there yet! - shed light on the computational architecture of cerebral cortex.
After studying veterinary medicine and neuroethology in Toulouse, Gilles Laurent was a Locke Research Fellow of the Royal Society in Cambridge (1987-1990). In 1990, he joined the Division of Biology and the Computation and Neural Systems Program at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He stayed on the faculty at Caltech until 2009, when he became a director at the Max Planck Institute of Brain Research in Frankfurt/Main.
For further information please contact Fiona Woods at fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk