题目：Attentional Neurons and Circuits

报告人：J. Julius Zhu, Ph. D

J. Julius Zhu, Ph. D is an associate professor at department of pharmacology, University of Virginia School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D in University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, WI. And has a M.S. in Chinese Academy of Science in Shanghai and B.S. Peking University. He has more than 20 years of experience in studying neuronal circuits and synaptic plasticity. His lab focused on cortical neuronal circuits involved in salience selection and synaptic plasticity and its regulation.

时间：2015年07月10日 星期五 13:00-14:00

地点： 北京大学金光生命科学大楼311会议室

Salience selection plays a key role in cortical attention-demanding processes, e.g., attentional, expectational, perceptual and working memory tasks. We have discovered that cortical pyramidal neurons that receive both modulatory and sensory inputs can use a coincidence detection mechanism to non-linearly amplify salient information. In addition, cortical inhibitory circuits may either inhibit or disinhibit this coincidence detection mechanism. Our findings suggest that cortical neurons, synapses, and circuits work together to filter out “noise” in the incoming information and allow more attention to salient signals.