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Work performed
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During the initial 6 months of the grant, based on preliminary data collection, we refined the visual stimulation paradigms and collected a first batch of experimental data. In-depth analyses of these data at the single neuron level allowed us to design further controls (to test the feature-specific role of the apparent motion induced flow) that were implemented during the second part of the data collection (months 6 through 18). During the last 6 months we further analysed the data, including population analyses, and started writing-up the manuscript for publication.
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Summary of main results
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Our results show that centripetal iso-oriented flow at saccadic speeds enhances the response of early visual neurons, while centrifugal, cross-oriented, or random flows do not. This indicates that the underlying network may only be recruited when the visual input carries a sufficient level of spatial and temporal coherence, as we hypothesized. Saccadic speeds, matching the conduction speeds of horizontal connectivity are also needed to obtain the boosting effect, which becomes weaker and eventually vanishes at lower speeds. We also found that, in a subset of neurons, sequences restricted to the silent surround (and excluding the centre of the receptive field) elicit a significant response; these cells can be interpreted as ""able to generate filling-in responses"".
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Exploitation and dissemination of results
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These results were presented at the American Society for Neuroscience Meeting (SfN 2015), the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP 2016), the Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (2017) and the NeuroFrance Meeting of the French Society for Neuroscience (2017). We are currently writing up the final manuscript to be submitted to a high impact factor journal.
We strongly believe that as scientists our job is not only to make discoveries but also to promote communication and transfer of knowledge to society. The fellow supported by this Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action has been involved in numerous outreach and science communication activities, often in collaboration with the DG Education and Culture:
- Conferences & demos for the general public
- Visits to high school classes
- EU scientific strategy and policy meetings (where scientists interact with political leaders, policy makers, stake-holders and industry representatives).
She was one of the 12 Marie Curie Alumni invited to give a TED-like talk at the “20 Years of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions” celebration in Brussels in November 2016.
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