One project addresses how animals extract a stable picture of the world with arrays of actively moving sensors. This problem is common to vision and somatosensation. Our experiments address the nature and origin of the reference signal for whisker motion in the motor and sensory pathway using extracellular recording techniques with behaving animals. The functional connectivity within and between motor and sensory cortex is studied with optical imaging and other electrophysiological techniques using anesthetized animals. A second area of interest is the large-scale dynamics of electrical activity in nervous systems.
Similar findings occur in the visual cortex of turtle.
The spatial features of these patterns encompass tens to hundreds of neurons. We ask if they simply reflect a general heightening of attention or if they represent either an expectation of the physical world or details of a stimulus. The latter possibilities, if true, would provide a link with our work on active sensation. Much of our research makes use of optical measurements of the electrical potential across the cell membrane. In some cases these measurements are make with the use of voltage sensitive dyes as contrast agents.