Talk from Guy Bouvier - NeuroPSI
Short abstract:
Many of the sensory organs that enable us to perceive the world around us are located onour head, for example, the eyes. To accurately represent our surroundings,sensory systems in the brain must combine their primary source of sensoryinformation, e.g. visual signals, with information about head movements inspace. The vestibular organs, located in the inner ear, provide thisinformation by transforming head motion into neural signals. Unlike othersenses, however, these head motion signals are not processed by a dedicatedcortical area, but are instead broadcast throughout the brain. We havepreviously demonstrated that neurons in mouse primary sensory areas suchas the primary visual cortex (V1) robustly respond to head movements, even inthe absence of visual stimuli. However, in contrast to our thoroughunderstanding of the pathways that convey visual signals to V1, our knowledgerelative to the sources of head movement signals to V1, and both the localprocessing and the nature of these signals, is still very rudimentary.Here, we find that various types of corticalneurons respond to head movement and V1 neurons encode a complexrepresentation of head movements, even in the absence of visual stimuli. Inaddition, we have evidence showing that V1 receives head movement signalsmostly through the pulvinar thalamus. Altogether, I will present the sources ofhead movement signals to V1 and how these signals impact V1 neurons activity.
Biosketch:
In his Doctoral thesis Guy worked with BorisBarbour and Mariano Casado (IBENS, Paris) to dissect synaptic plasticity rulesand their impact on motor learning, using the parallel fibre-Purkinje cellssynapse of the cerebellum as a model system. After earning his PhD Guy joined the laboratoryof Massimo Scanziani at the University of California, San Francisco/HHMI (USA)where he worked on circuit computations in neuronal populations. At UCSF Guy explored how thevestibulo-cerebellar circuit could modulate the activity of sensory cortices,such as the primary visual cortex. Supported by the European ResearchCouncil, Guy established the SensoMotion Lab in the summer of 2023 at theNeuroscience Institute of Paris-Saclay. His lab aims to unravel how our ownmotion impacts sensory processing, and ultimately our internal model of theworld.