UE470 - Cognitive neurophysiology: attention, perception, decision (NEURO 202)

Intervenant·e·s

• Yves Boubenec [référent·e]   maître de conférences, ENS

The aim of this course is to introduce the audience with classical and cutting edge topics and analytical techniques in the field of  cognitive neurophysiology. We will review recent research articles focusing on perceptual attention and decision-making. We will study the interplay between bottom-up and top-down factors during the selection of relevant information. We will also implement some basic quantitative analysis to get a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. The emphasis will be on electrophysiological recordings across multiple areas (from sensory to frontal cortices) in behaving animals.

Each class will be divided in three parts: 1. A student will present one paper from a set of articles proposed in advance. 2. The instructor will wrap-up the presentation by presenting some background around the topic of the day. 3. Programming hands-on in relationship with the studied article will be performed.

L'objectif de ce séminaire est de présenter des résultats et des techniques d’analyse récents en physiologie de l'attention et de la prise de décision. Nous discuterons des mécanismes corticaux de sélection d'informations pertinentes, ainsi que de l'influence des aires supérieures sur le traitement de l'information sensorielle. Un accent tout particulier sera mis sur des articles d'électrophysiologie chez l'animal en comportement, en détaillant l'activité neuronale à travers de nombreuses aires du cortex (des aires sensorielles aux aires frontales).

Un cours d’introduction fournira à chacun les bases conceptuelles des articles abordées. Chaque semaine un étudiant présentera un article choisi parmi une liste prédéfinie, puis un cours plus général mettra les résultats en contexte, avant de concrètement programmer certaines analyses rencontrées dans les articles.

Each week will be dedicated to one research article. This article will be presented by a student in a short talk (about 30-45 minutes), followed by a discussion among the students. To ensure a lively discussion, every student has to read the article and submit a question about it one week in advance. Students in the course will be judged by the talk they give (50%) and their participation in the discussions of all the other talks, including the questions asked online (50%).