Neural Coding in Different Sensory Modalities
Got that? The title of the workshop I attended today. It was a day packed to the brim, with 6 speakers each packing 45 mins of information, with lots of technical details too. We all got terribly soporific after lunch and I was really hoping for Andy King (Oxford)'s presentation to end so I could go out and grab a cuppa. But he went on and on with his in-depth "report" on ferrets, mammals and their auditory responses.
The day began before ten, with me having clawed out of my bed only shortly after nine. A quick breakfast of Alpen in mango juice (haha) followed before I jetted off to the Engineering building. The first talk by Cambridge's Simon Laughlin on the effects of energy and molecular noise limiting the miniaturisation of neronal circuits was interesting enough, and he with the white, curly dishevelled hair had a sense of humour. But nothing could prime us for the first boring talk of the day by Peter Foldiak (St Andrews). I felt that his presentation was lacking in direction and ultimately failed to spark any half-surviving neuron in my CNS* as to the scope of his investigation. Nor were his findings, which were inconclusive at best. His lack of voice projection further compounded the situation on a cold and gloomy morning. But at least we had LT2...
Good ol' Tim Pearce, my bo-chap** personal tutor with the rather refreshing sense of humour (what a good salvation point!) was next as he injected some life into the dying audience with his discussion on the olfactorical sensitivity enhancement in the moth. Buffet lunch was sandwiches (how many times have I gone through them?) without any dessert (yes, Aaron...). Berthold Hedwig (Cambridge)'s study on crickets and their auditory sense did nothing to dampen the atmosphere, especially with his experimental cricket walking on a trackball and responding to sound stimuli being so amusing. One of the challenges of any researcher has to be how he designs his experiments. There are numerous design constraints placed on a researcher and he has to get the most out of his resources. This frequently means that we have to think of new and exotic ways to get our poor little guinea pigs*** to respond to our ingenious methods oftorture testing.
Next up, Andy King with his take on the mammalian auditory neuronal mechanism. Enough said. Saving the best (or at least most unique) for last was Manchester's Stefano Panzeri: The Role of Spike Timing in Cortical Coding of Somatosensory Stimuli. His Italian-spiced english was habsorluuutly sizzzzzliiing. It took me a while to get the hang of his english. Andhespokeatapacewhichbeliedhisapparentbaldingpate. Fast and difficult to hear, but his rodent topic and the potential for a joke kept me awake for most parts of it (or perhaps it was the coffee that did it?) Finally the inevitable came and he mentioned how he applied the stimuli on the rat. As it stands, the rat has a definitive number of whiskers and you can select one to apply an electic stimuli. But I've got a better suggestion. Why not you just pull the whisker? Then you can instantly see its reaction too. Kekekeke.... anyway his results were quite astonishing, as he showed that spike analysis could be time-critical and something that was precise and decodable to show that the preciseness of it represented something to the rat brain. It wasn't a random firing of the neuron. This clashes with the contemporary theory that many synapses are unreliable with respect to a precisely-firing neuron. He also showed that the first spike (depolarisation) potentially contained all the information the rat brain needed to know and hence the subsequent spikes were irrelevant in that context. However, his exploration of the rat whisker hinges on his argument on the information content of the signal. That is assuming the rat needs all the information that is contained in the signal ie the signal transmitted was to be 100% efficient. But I think that may not be the case. It might be that it is a convenience in nature, as with some synapses which do not need to be accurate. One participant pointed out that an "unreliable" synapse allowed for plasticity and learning, which was a very good point too. And of course assuming that the following spikes are of no immediate use to the rat, which is highly unlikely cos body systems have evolved to be as efficient as they can be. There must be a reason for subsequent spikes.
It may have been a tiring day, with me still hopping over to the library to grab a few books for my 3rd Year Project choices, but fully rewarding, even if I did not understand the bulk of the zoological and life-scientifical discussions they animately had in the LT. They even adjourned to a pub, I think, while the rest of us slunk off.
Damn I need another cuppa... this is zapping the daylights out of me...
* central nervous system
** care-for-nothing
*** just a metaphor. It could well be a rat!
The day began before ten, with me having clawed out of my bed only shortly after nine. A quick breakfast of Alpen in mango juice (haha) followed before I jetted off to the Engineering building. The first talk by Cambridge's Simon Laughlin on the effects of energy and molecular noise limiting the miniaturisation of neronal circuits was interesting enough, and he with the white, curly dishevelled hair had a sense of humour. But nothing could prime us for the first boring talk of the day by Peter Foldiak (St Andrews). I felt that his presentation was lacking in direction and ultimately failed to spark any half-surviving neuron in my CNS* as to the scope of his investigation. Nor were his findings, which were inconclusive at best. His lack of voice projection further compounded the situation on a cold and gloomy morning. But at least we had LT2...
Good ol' Tim Pearce, my bo-chap** personal tutor with the rather refreshing sense of humour (what a good salvation point!) was next as he injected some life into the dying audience with his discussion on the olfactorical sensitivity enhancement in the moth. Buffet lunch was sandwiches (how many times have I gone through them?) without any dessert (yes, Aaron...). Berthold Hedwig (Cambridge)'s study on crickets and their auditory sense did nothing to dampen the atmosphere, especially with his experimental cricket walking on a trackball and responding to sound stimuli being so amusing. One of the challenges of any researcher has to be how he designs his experiments. There are numerous design constraints placed on a researcher and he has to get the most out of his resources. This frequently means that we have to think of new and exotic ways to get our poor little guinea pigs*** to respond to our ingenious methods of
Next up, Andy King with his take on the mammalian auditory neuronal mechanism. Enough said. Saving the best (or at least most unique) for last was Manchester's Stefano Panzeri: The Role of Spike Timing in Cortical Coding of Somatosensory Stimuli. His Italian-spiced english was habsorluuutly sizzzzzliiing. It took me a while to get the hang of his english. Andhespokeatapacewhichbeliedhisapparentbaldingpate. Fast and difficult to hear, but his rodent topic and the potential for a joke kept me awake for most parts of it (or perhaps it was the coffee that did it?) Finally the inevitable came and he mentioned how he applied the stimuli on the rat. As it stands, the rat has a definitive number of whiskers and you can select one to apply an electic stimuli. But I've got a better suggestion. Why not you just pull the whisker? Then you can instantly see its reaction too. Kekekeke.... anyway his results were quite astonishing, as he showed that spike analysis could be time-critical and something that was precise and decodable to show that the preciseness of it represented something to the rat brain. It wasn't a random firing of the neuron. This clashes with the contemporary theory that many synapses are unreliable with respect to a precisely-firing neuron. He also showed that the first spike (depolarisation) potentially contained all the information the rat brain needed to know and hence the subsequent spikes were irrelevant in that context. However, his exploration of the rat whisker hinges on his argument on the information content of the signal. That is assuming the rat needs all the information that is contained in the signal ie the signal transmitted was to be 100% efficient. But I think that may not be the case. It might be that it is a convenience in nature, as with some synapses which do not need to be accurate. One participant pointed out that an "unreliable" synapse allowed for plasticity and learning, which was a very good point too. And of course assuming that the following spikes are of no immediate use to the rat, which is highly unlikely cos body systems have evolved to be as efficient as they can be. There must be a reason for subsequent spikes.
It may have been a tiring day, with me still hopping over to the library to grab a few books for my 3rd Year Project choices, but fully rewarding, even if I did not understand the bulk of the zoological and life-scientifical discussions they animately had in the LT. They even adjourned to a pub, I think, while the rest of us slunk off.
Damn I need another cuppa... this is zapping the daylights out of me...
* central nervous system
** care-for-nothing
*** just a metaphor. It could well be a rat!
posted by cheez~ at
6:50 pm
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