Speaker：Prof. Israel Nelken，Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences，Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Time： 13:00 - 14:30, Nov. 1, 2023

Venue：Youcai Deng Lecture Hall（金光101）

Host: Dr. Huan Luo

Abstract

I will describe our work on the sensitivity of neurons in the rodent auditory system to expected and unexpected events. Neurons in auditory cortex show deviance sensitivity to deviations in many (but not all) sound features, including frequency, temporal envelope, and spectro-temporal content. More recently we also documented activity evoked by the omission of expected events, as well as sensitivity to sequential dependences even when they are rather weak. However, neurons in auditory cortex integrate much more than just auditory inputs. When recording in freely-moving rats, we uncovered surprisingly large firing rate modulations that may explicitly represent temporal expectations, and may set the cortical state for extracting relevant information from the incoming sounds.