Hirsch, Judith A.
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences
Our laboratory studies the thalamus, the interface between neocortex and the sensory periphery. Thalamus was once regarded as a simple gatekeeper, passively relaying information during waking and shielding neocortex from disturbance during sleep, but this is an impoverished view. We explore how thalamus, itself, contributes to sensory integration. In particular, we study the structure of neural circuits in the visual part of thalamus, how these operate during vision and how they extract and recode information from the eye. Our work shows how thalamus might contribute to visual processing by, for example, sharpening the visual image and increasing the efficiency of the neural code. Because circuits in different parts of thalamus are similar, our work pertains to thalamic function in general.
