Steven Hsiao, PhD
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| Neurophysiology of the Central Nervous System |
| The broad aim of our research is to understand the neural basis for perception. Specifically, the aim is to determine how object size, shape and texture are represented in the activity of neurons in the central nervous system and how those representations are affected by selective attention. When grasping and manipulating an object we readily appreciate both the global features about the object such as its size, and three-dimensional shape and the local surface features of the object such as local curvature, orientation of edges and surface texture. Information about local features relies on inputs from four different kinds of cutaneous receptors that innervate the skin. Information about global features relies on the integration of inputs from cutaneous receptors and inputs from deep receptors that provide information about hand conformation. Our research is currently studying how neurons in primary and secondary somatosensory cortex process information about local and global features of stimuli. Single-unit recordings are made from animals performing a variety of tactile discrimination tasks that require them to discriminate the size and shape of virtual objects indented into the skin. The aim is to understand the role that hand conformation plays in shape processing and to determine how information is integrated between digits on the same and opposite hand. An additional goal is to determine the role and mechanisms of selective attention in tactile shape processing |
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