EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Synaptic mechanisms underlying computation in the auditory cortex in vivo: The cocktail party problem
Speaker: Tony Zador
Speaker Info: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Brief Description:
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Abstract:

The neurons that provide the substrate for cortical computation appear quite noisy (although just how noisy remains a subject of some controversy), suggesting that the cortex uses a strategy rather different from that of a digital computer. The cortex is nevertheless able to solve hard computational problems, such as the cocktail party problem (an auditory analog of the visual scene segmentation problem), that remain beyond the capacity of the fastest computers. We have been combining experimental and theoretical approaches to study the special characteristics of cortical "wetware" that endow it with the capacity to solve such hard problems. I will discuss some recent experiments where we have used in vivo whole cell patch clamp recordings to study how acoustic signals are represented in the rodent primary auditory cortex.