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SFB 874:  Integration and Representation of Sensory Processes

Subject Area Medicine
Biology
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Term from 2010 to 2022
Website Homepage
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 122679504
 
To enable cognitive representations of sensory processes, sensory information derived from our senses (e.g. audition, vestibulation, olfaction/taste, somatosensation, nociception and vision) must, following its initial perception at the level of the sensor, be integrated at the level of the cortex. The transduction of this sensory information, during first-order cortical integration, is followed by increasingly complex higher order processing, which enables the fine-tuning of the sensory percept such that behaviour and memory result.In this collaborative research centre (Sonderforschungsbereich, SFB) our goal is to implement a systems neuroscience approach to clarify key aspects of sensory processing at the cortical level. To do this we study humans and animals, and integrate our empirical observations into computational models. We are particularly interested in understanding how sensory information processing leads to learning and memory formation, or to higher order representations such as categorisation, spatial representation, and explicit memory.In the current funding period of the SFB we observed that directed elevations, and under certain circumstances selective suppression, of cortical excitability promote perceptual learning. At the level of categorisation, we observed that the hippocampus is likely to play a critical role in learning to implement different categorisation strategies. At the level of spatial memory processing of sensory experience, we observed that whereas the saliency and the context of the sensory modality are decisive, the modality of the sense itself is less critical when spatial sensory experience promotes neural and synaptic encoding in structures such as the hippocampus. We also acquired novel evidence of cross- and multimodal sensory information processing in the primary sensory cortices.Based on our current findings, we will focus in the third phase of the SFB on the clarification of how different cortical and subcortical structures interact in the enablement of information integration, on how neuromodulation and excitability status can determine cortical reorganisation and plasticity resulting from sensory learning, on a scrutiny of conditions that lead to cross- and multimodal information processing, and on the mechanisms and brain structures that enable higher order representations of memory and sensory experience.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

Applicant Institution Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Participating University Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
 
 

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