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The Importance of Being Variable - causes and effects of the variability in brain activity| old_uid | 10023 |
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| title | The Importance of Being Variable - causes and effects of the variability in brain activity |
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| start_date | 2015/09/28 |
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| schedule | 11h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | A typical task design in cognitive neuroscience or experimental psychology involves presenting the participant with the exact same assignment or sensory stimulus multiple times, and then obtaining an average response. This is necessary, because the responses to such assignments or stimuli - be it reaction times, skin conductance, or brain responses measured with fMRI or MEG/EEG - are typically highly variable even within a single participant. This variability is largely caused by activity that is spontaneously generated by the cortex. Such spontaneous activity is also visible in the fMRI signal; since it is typically studied while the participant is at rest, it is known as resting-state activity. In my talk, I'll explore various aspects of this resting-state activity: its spatial structure in the visual cortex and its relationship to the underlying spontaneous neural activity. I'll end by showing some recent data that I collected in the awake macaque monkey, that investigate how variability in brain activity leads to moment-to-moment variations in the perception of visual stimuli. |
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| responsibles | Rämä, Izard |
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