Etudes des mécanismes de l'adaptation et des relations interneuronales au cortex.

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During the last cycle my lab investigated two themes. A) The influence of adaptation on changes of preferred stimulus in visual cortex; our findings point to opportunities to explore plasticity of neurons and neuronal networks. B) The functional relationships between neurons forming a connectome. This topic suggests a process of encoding neuronal signals. Our research program aims to further develop the above innovative topics in order to understand fundamental mechanisms of plasticity and the dynamics of population encoding in the CNS. Our proposed program deals with the two hottest topics: plasticity and dynamics of connectomes. Experiments are carried out on anesthetized animals. Electrode matrices are lowered into the cortex. The following specific subjects will be investigated. A) Influence of an initial stimulus upon responses evoked by a following stimulus. Stimuli leave a trace. In the initial phase we apply two types of stimuli. The first conditioning short stimulus is constant, that is, exhibiting an identical property, the second conditioning stimulus (same type) projects a variable property e.g.orientations. Conditioning stimuli are followed at a predetermined interval by a test stimulus. The hypothesis is how each of the conditioning stimuli affects the responses to the test stimulus?