Events Calendar

Engineering Neuroscience & Health Seminar

Speaker: Ranulfo Romo Trujillo, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexica (UNAM)

Talk Title: Conversion of sensory signals into perceptual decisions

Abstract: Most perceptual tasks require sequential steps to be carried out. This must be the case, for example, when subjects discriminate the difference in frequency between two mechanical vibrations applied sequentially to their fingertips. This perceptual task can be understood as a chain of neural operations: encoding the two consecutive stimulus frequencies, maintaining the first stimulus in working memory, comparing the second stimulus to the memory trace left by the first stimulus, and communicating the result of the comparison to the motor apparatus. The divisions between these steps may be artificial, but breaking the problem into pieces is helpful. Here I discuss several such pieces, although, in the long run, I aim for an integrated understanding of the perceptual processes, at least to the extent possible within the minimalist environment of a laboratory task.

Biography: About:
Professor of Neuroscience at the Institute of Cellular Physiology of the National Autonomous Uinversity of Mexico (UNAM). He received his M.D. degree from the UNAM and a D.Sc. in the field of Neuroscience from the University of Paris. His postdoctoral work was done with Wolfram Schultz at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and with Vernon Mountcastle at the Johns Hopkins University.

Awards and Honors:
He received the 1990 Demuth Prize in Neuroscience from the Swiss Medical Research Foundation, the 2000 National Prize in Sciences and Arts from the Mexican government, the 2002 Prize in Basic Medical Sciences, and the 2009 Ranwell Caputto prize from the Argentinean Society of Neurosciences. He has delivered the 2005 Presidential Lecture at the Society of Neuroscience Congress; the 2005 Brooks Lecture at Harvard Medical School; the 2006 Teuber Lecture at MIT; the 2007 Harman Lecture at Cajal Club; and in 2009 the Ragnar Lecture at the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Romo is editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience and a member of the editorial board of Progress in Neurobiology.



Host: Francisco Valero-Cuevas

Webcast: http://capture.usc.edu/college/Catalog/?cid=af180d48-ceff-42b9-a35c-eb199daed320

More Information: Romo Trujillo Flyer.pdf

Location: Hedco Neurosciences Building (HNB) - 100

WebCast Link: http://capture.usc.edu/college/Catalog/?cid=af180d48-ceff-42b9-a35c-eb199daed320

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: BME-ENH Seminar