Reynolds Lab
Principal Investigator: John H Reynolds
Institution: Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, CA)
Primary Subfield: Synthetic Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT An important longstanding goal in neuroscience research is to understand how large-scale spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity emerge in the brain and whether they have a direct role in shaping the brain’s computational processes and thereby mammalian behavior. Notably, traveling waves of neural activity have been implicated in sensory, cognitive, and motor behaviors, and this team recently found that intrinsic traveling waves (iTWs) in visual cortical areas predict the magnitude of evoked spiking activity and visual perceptual sensitivity in awake, behaving non-human primates. However, it remains unclear whether iTWs reflect an underlying fundamental mechanism of cortical function or whether they might simply be epiphenomenal. This project will examine the role of neocortical iTWs in visual perception and is guided by a theoretical model of iTW activity that makes specific testable and falsifiable predictions about the mechanisms that give rise to the spatiotemporal features of iTWs and their roles in sensory behavior. The model is based on a network of spiking neurons and predicts that iTWs emerge from the anatomical organization of horizontal cortic…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01EY028723-08: Spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity and their role in perception (2026)
- 5U01NS131914-03: Traveling Waves in Neocortical Circuits: Mechanisms, Computational Roles in Sensory Processing, and Impact on Sensory Perception (2025)
- 5R01EY028723-07: Spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity and their role in perception (2025)
- 5U01NS131914-02: Traveling waves in neocortical circuits: Mechanisms, computational roles in sensory processing, and impact on sensory perception (2024)
- 5R01EY028723-06: Spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity and their role in perception (2024)
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