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SUMMARY:Fly photoreceptors encode phase congruency - Prof Daniel Coca\, Un
 iversity of Sheffield
DTSTART:20160526T150000Z
DTEND:20160526T160000Z
UID:TALK65692@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sarah Harrison
DESCRIPTION:More than five decades ago it was postulated that sensory neur
 ons detect and selectively enhance behaviourally relevant features of natu
 ral signals. Although we now know that sensory neurons are tuned to encode
  efficiently natural stimuli\, until now it was not clear what statistical
  features of the stimuli they encode and how. \n\nIn this talk I will show
  that photoreceptors exploit nonlinear dynamics to selectively enhance and
  encode phase-related features of temporal stimuli\, such as local phase c
 ongruency\, which are invariant to changes in illumination and contrast. T
 o mitigate for the inherent sensitivity to noise of the local phase congru
 ency measure\, the nonlinear coding mechanisms of the fly photoreceptors a
 re tuned to suppress random phase signals\, which explains why photorecept
 or responses to naturalistic stimuli are significantly different from thei
 r responses to white noise stimuli.
LOCATION:Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room\, Physiology Building\, Downing Site
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