Bernstein-CorTec Award 2021 | Jeanine Laturner: Ocular dominance plasticity in a thalamo-cortical recurrent network model
| When |
Nov 09, 2021
from 05:00 PM to 06:00 PM |
|---|---|
| Where | Zoom Meeting. Meeting ID and password will be sent with e-mail invitation. You can also ask Fiona Siegfried for Meeting ID and password. |
| Contact Name | Fiona Siegfried |
| Contact Phone | 0761 203 9549 |
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In this video, the awardee introduces herself
Video
Abstract
Traditionally, the visual cortex was viewed as the first stage where retinal input converges and therefore experience-dependent plasticity was believed to be exclusively cortical. However, recent studies show that retinal ganglion cells already converge at the level of the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN), a part of the thalamus. Binocular responsiveness of thalamic neurons suggests ocular dominance plasticity not only in cortex but also within dLGN or thalamo-cortical projections.
Recent studies show that when closing one eye for a certain amount of time thalamic relay cells respond stronger to input from the open eye after monocular deprivation. This is called an ocular dominance shift and cannot be explained by cortical feedback only. Ocular dominance plasticity is likely to underly Hebbian and homeostatic mechanisms. In this talk I will present different plasticity rules based on homeostatic principles in a thalamic recurrent network model. We will explore which prerequisites are crucial to observe an ocular dominance shift after monocular deprivation as has been observed in experiments.
