Behavioural role and neural representation of temporal dynamics in sensory stimuli

The world is a dynamic place. This is particularly true for the sense of smell. Air turbulences impose a rich temporal structure onto smells, as can be appreciated from watching smoke meandering, for example. Professor Schaefer will explore what this temporal structure is, what information it contains, how it is represented in the brain and how it is used to extract critical insight about the world, such as the location of odour sources. Through electrical recordings, images of brain activity and perturbation of specific neuronal types, he will investigate how stimulus dynamics govern behaviour, and thus unravel mechanisms of how information about the external world is represented and processed in neural circuits.