Neeraj Gandhi - Decoding population activity in the superior colliculus for the generation of saccadic eye movements

We routinely interact with our environment by orienting to objects of interest. The brain must first process the sensory stimulus and then use this information to generate a motor command. The superior colliculus (SC) is a major subcortical structure involved in the sensory-to-motor transformation of visual signals into motor commands that produce high velocity eye movements known as saccades. Each saccade is associated with activity in a population of SC neurons, and a mechanism is required to decode the ensemble response into a single and appropriate saccade eye movement. In this seminar, I will discuss our recent (and preliminary) work that seeks to understand the decoding mechanism.