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Diego
Contreras, M.D., Ph.D.
Assoc Professor, Dept of Neuroscience
School of Medicine
121 Anatomy Chemistry Bldg.
(215) 573-8780
email: diegoc@mail.med.upenn.edu
Click here for selected publications since Dr. Contreras's arrival at Penn
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Representation of information in cortical and thalamocortical networks.RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Intracellular and optical recordings in vivo and in vitro.RESEARCH SUMMARY
My lab's focus is on how the intrinsic cellular properties of neurons and the characteristics of local neuronal networks contribute to the encoding of peripheral sensory input in two separate animal models: (i) the cat visual system and (ii) the rat whisker system. Responses to sensory stimuli are recorded from the neocortex and thalamus in vivo using intracellular and optical voltage-sensitive dye methods. These methods are also applied to the brain slice preparation in order to further study the dynamics of cortical microcircuitry.
Using these techniques, we address a number of basic questions. Do differences in intrinsic cellular properties across individual neurons contribute to the representation of sensory inputs? How do local network properties such as feed-forward and feed-back inhibition shape the representation of peripheral stimuli? How do single cells acquire selectivity to specific stimulus features? How are thalamic and cortical receptive fields generated? How are responses to multiple sensory inputs integrated at different levels in the brain?
KEY WORDS:
cortex, thalamus, sensory coding, intracellular, optical, barrels, vision
