UC Berkeley

Despite remarkable progress in understanding the neurophysiology of cortex, fundamental questions regarding its function remain unanswered. The present study explores how a local population of neurons along a cortical column in visual cortex responds to dynamic natural stimuli. I show how a novel application of sparse coding to neural recordings obtained with high-density laminar probes can separate the complex statistical structure of this data into biophysically interpretable, underlying causes. The resulting data representation is instrumental in characterizing both spiking and local field potential activity across lamina in response to natural movies. Finally, I present a framework for understanding laminar population activity in terms of a statistical model that accounts for network interactions as well as the driving influence of the stimulus.