Giocomo, Lisa
<p>Mar 31, 2014 04:17 PM</p>
<p>see Lisa's seminar today: here is her abstract</p>
<p>Our lab is interested in understanding how ion channels control neural coding and behavior. Throughout the nervous system, neural inputs and outputs are shaped, tuned and integrated by highly diversified sets of ion channels. Remarkably, how ion channels control neural coding and how these codes translate into accurate behavior remain central mysteries of neural processing. To address this question, we take advantage of the simplicity of spatial coding by non-sensory medial entorhinal cortex neurons and my recent discovery of an ion channel that directly maps to specific features of functionally-defined medial entorhinal cells. Neural circuits in the medial entorhinal cortex translate sensory input about the external environment to an internal map of space. Within this circuit, grid cells provide a neural metric for distance traveled and are proposed to underlie path-integration and the cognitive process of self-localization. In this talk, I will discuss the contributions of single-cell intrinsic dynamics to neural coding and computation by entorhinal grid cells. The striking periodicity of the grid firing pattern has spurred multiple computational proposals for the emergence of grid cell firing properties, highlighting grid cells as an ideal system for investigating mechanisms of high-order cortical circuit computation.</p>
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