Single Trial Reconstruction of Acoustic Stimuli from Multielectrode Cortical Recordings of Awake Ferrets

感官错觉表明，我们对世界的感知会受到大脑结构的影响。虽然人类可以报告他们的经验，但在动物实验的情况下，我们必须依赖其他场所。在这个项目中，我们的目标是重建声谱图的听觉刺激的基础上，从清醒的雪貂的听觉皮层的神经元群体的多电极记录。模仿大脑的实时任务，我们将开发重建技术，在单一的试验和尊重时间因果关系。为了解释神经元之间相关性的可能作用，我们将采用多线性建模框架进行刺激重建，提供有限范围的二阶相互作用。接下来，我们想应用这些方法来估计动物在行为环境中对模糊刺激（例如流类型）的感知，从而验证重建。一般来说，解释神经元活动的能力将是一系列假体应用的关键。这个项目将由Shamma教授（马里兰州大学）主持，他的团队在结合计算分析和行为神经生理学方面有着丰富的经验。

Sensoryose illusions demonstrate how strongly our perception of the world can be biased by the structure of the brain. While humans can report their percept, we have to rely on other venues in the case of animal experiments. In this project we aim to reconstruct the spectrograms of acoustic stimuli based on multielectrode recordings from a neuronal population in the auditory cortex of awake ferrets. Mimicking the brain’s real-time task, we will develop reconstruction techniques that operate on single trials and respect temporal causality. To account for the possible role of correlations between neurons, we will adapt the multilinear modeling framework for stimulus reconstruction, providing a limited range of second order interactions. Next, we want to apply these methods to estimate the animals percept of an ambiguous stimulus (e.g. streaming type) in a behavioral setting, allowing to verify the reconstructions. Generally, the ability to interpret the neuronal activity will be key for a range of prosthetic applications. This project will be hosted by Prof. Shamma (Univ. of Maryland), wh group has substantial experience in combining computational analysis with behavioral neurophysiology.