VISION: A PLATFORM FOR LINKING
CIRCUITS, PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR
July 7- 21, 2015
Application Deadline: March 31, 2015
Instructors:
Farran Briggs, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth Andrew Huberman, University of California San Diego
See the Roll of Honor - who's taken the course in the past
The purpose of this course is to bring together students and faculty for in depth and high level discussions of modern approaches for probing how specific cell types and circuits give rise to defined categories of perception and action. It is also designed to address novel strategies aimed at overcoming diseases that compromise sensory function.
The visual system is the most widely studied sensory modality. Recently, three major shifts have occurred in the field of neuroscience. First, owing to the large array of genetic techniques available in mice and the relative ease of imaging and recording from the cortex of small rodents, the mouse visual system has become a premiere venue for attacking the fundamental unresolved question of how specific cells and circuits relate to visual performance at the receptive field and whole-animal level. Second, genetic and viral methods have evolved to the point where neurophysiologists can directly probe the role of defined circuits in species such as macaque monkeys, thus bridging the mechanism-cognition gap. Third, the field of visual neuroscience is rapidly paving the way for widespread clinical application of stem cell, gene therapy and prosthetic devices to restore sensory function in humans.
The time is ripe to build on the classic paradigms and discoveries of visual system structure, function and disease, in order to achieve a deep, mechanistic understanding of how receptive fields are organized and filter sensory information, how that information is handled at progressively higher levels of neural processing, and how different circuits can induce defined categories of percepts and behaviors in the healthy and diseased brain.
Speakers for 2015 include:
Steven Becker, National Institutes of Health
Edward Callaway, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
EJ Chichilnisky, Stanford University
Anne Churchland, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Thomas Clandinin, Stanford University
Claude Desplan, New York University
Felice Dunn, University of California, San Francisco
Marla Feller, University of California, Berkeley
David Fitzpatrick, Max-Planck Florida Insitute
Jack Gallant, University of California, Berkeley
Jackie Gottlieb, Columbia University
William Guido, University of Louisville
Judith Hirsch, University of Southern California
Sonja Hofer, University of Basel, Switzerland
Gregory Horwitz, University of Washington
Richard Krauzlis, National Institute of Health
John Maunsell, University of Chicago
J. Anthony Movshon, New York University
Cristopher Niell, University of Oregon
Rachael Pearson, University College London, UK
Botond Roska, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland
Nicole Rust, University of Pennsylvania
Sam Solomon, University College London, UK
Doris Tsao, California Institute of Technology
W. Marty Usrey, University of California, Davis
Brian Wandell, Stanford University
Wei Wei, University of Chicago
Course Schedule:
July 6: Students arrive
July 7: Visual System Overview - Course Directors
July 8: Circuit Motifs for Generating Specialized Receptive Fields/Botond Roska and Felice Dunn
July 9: Comparative Physiology of Early Visual Pathways/ Sam Solomon and Bill Guido
July 10: Receptive Field Transformations I (Early Visual Pathways)/Judith Hirsch and Marty Usrey
July 11: Direction Selectivity (and Other Organizational Motifs)/Wei Wei and David Fitzpatrick
July 12: Functional Architecture and Cortical Specializations/Ed Callaway and Sonja Hofer
July 13: Day Off
July 14: Color Vision/Claude Desplan and Greg Horwitz
July 15: Restoring Vision/Rachel Pearson, EJ Chichilnisky and Steven Becker
July 16: State-Dependent Influences on Visual Processing/Cris Niell and Anne Churchland
July 17: Receptive Field Transformations II (Extrastriate Pathways)/Tony Movshon and Nicole Rust
July 18: Cortical Computations for Vision and Attention/John Maunsell and Brian Wandell
July 19: Eye Movements and Attention/Rich Krauzlis and Jackie Gottlieb
July 20: Image Recognition and Perception/Doris Tsao and Jack Gallant
The course will be held at the Laboratory’s Banbury Conference Center located on the north shore of Long Island. All participants stay within walking distance of the Center, close to tennis court, pool and private beach. The course will begin on the morning of July 7 (students are expected to arrive on the afternoon or evening of July 6) and end with departure on the morning of July 21.
The course will be supported with funds provided by the Helmsley Charitable Trust. Grant funds from the National Eye Institute may be used to defray student tuition, room and board costs, subject to financial need.
Cost (including board and lodging): $3,725
This button links to a short form which confirms your interest in the course.
No fees are due until you have completed the full application process and
are accepted into the course.