Adesnik Lab · UC Berkeley
We study how cortical circuits transform sensory information into cognitive representations that guide behavior. To achieve this, we build advanced optical tools to read and write neural activity with cellular resolution across very large populations of neurons in the living brain.
Our brain is responsible for all our perceptions, thoughts, and actions. How is it that a collection of neurons and their synapses gives rise to all of animal and human behavior? The Adesnik Lab studies how cortical microcircuits process sensory information to generate perception. We combine optical technologies with quantitative behavior to develop optical brain–machine interfaces that read and write neural activity with cellular resolution and millisecond precision across large volumes of the brain.
Research
How do neural circuits enable visual recognition, tracking, and scene segmentation? We use large-scale recordings and targeted optical perturbations in rodents — and higher species — to dissect how cortical microcircuits transform sensory input into perception.
We build optical brain–machine interfaces that read and write neural activity with cellular resolution and millisecond precision across large volumes of the brain, engineering new opsins, holographic photostimulation, and all-optical read–write systems that can place arbitrary activity patterns into cortical circuits.
How does sensory processing give rise to conscious experience? Using visual illusions, precise neural perturbations, and behavioral psychophysics, we probe the brain's internal model and the link between cortical activity and what an animal perceives.
Publications