Adam Kohn, Ph.D.

My laboratory studies the neural circuits that underlie visual perception, a general issue that we approach from several directions.  For instance, we study how the responsivity and tuning of cortical neurons is altered by recent stimulus history.  This form of rapid plasticity--termed adaptation--has strong perceptual effects, allowing us to explore the neurophysiological underpinnings of perceptual phenomena.  In addition, we are interested in understanding the functional benefit of adaptation and in learning how adaptation early in the visual system affects subsequent stages of processing.  We hope that by understanding the principles of adaptation we will also gain insight into other forms of plasticity such as perceptual learning and recovery from injury.  We also study how populations of neurons function together to encode information about the visual world.  We record from small populations of neurons simultaneously and measure the correlation of their responses.  In particular, we explore how correlation depends on stimulus parameters, recent stimulus history, and cortical location.  The primary techniques of the lab are neurophysiological recordings and computational modeling, but also include psychophysics and functional imaging.  We hope that employing a range of experimental techniques will help us understand the computations carried out by the visual system and the circuits that perform them.