Information Processing in the Nervous System

Our fundamental interest is to understand the mechanisms used by the nervous system to process and analyze information about the sensory environment. Information processing in the nervous system operates on a number of fundamental levels: the dynamic electrical signalling of individual neurons (regulated by ion channels and their distribution within the cell membrane), the communcation between neurons that takes place largely at synapses, and the collective behavior of sets of neurons within neural circuits that are excited (or inhibited) according to external stimuli and internal conditions. Neural information processing is neither static nor uniform; rather at all levels, from molecules to networks, it depends on preceeding states, including developmental interactions with the environment, lifelong learning and training experience, and the immediate cellular and behavioral context. The sensory systems (hearing, vision, touch, smell, taste, and balance) have proven to be excellent experimental systems to study neural information processing. Sensory information processing is often easily traced from one level to the next, the external stimulus can be well controlled, and the constraints of the system and requirements for specific types of processing are often readily discernable. Previous and ongoing work in the laboratory has focussed on electrical signalling and ion channels in individual neurons, and synaptic communication between cells. A new direction that we are taking is to examine neural circuit organization and synaptic plasticity in cortex.