Research Fellow

	Email: m.okun@le.ac.uk
	Tel: +44(0)116 373 6279
	Room 333a Maurice Shock Building Department of Neuroscience, Psychology & Behaviour University of Leicester Leicester, LE1 7RH

Research Interests

Cortex plays a key role in sensorimotor and higher cognitive processes. Even in species like the mouse, where cortical involvement is less profound than in primates, the cortex still comprises 30% of the total volume of the brain. Understanding information processing in the cortex is therefore of central importance for the entire neuroscience endeavour. One approach towards this goal is to link cortical spiking activity to external variables of interest, such as sensory inputs, motor outputs or decision making behaviours (a classic example of an outcome of this approach is the extensive knowledge we now have about processing of visual inputs). However, most cortical activity is internally generated and persists even in the absence of any external influences. Furthermore, because the entire cortical sheet is comprised of different modifications of the same canonical microcircuit (the cortical column), the internally generated dynamics in different parts of the cortex is similar.

In light of these basic facts of cortical structure and function, rather than tackling the question of cortical information processing head on, by studying how a particular cortical area encodes external information specific to its function, I am interested in understanding the internal organisation of activity in cortical microcircuits. That is, I would like to understand how different groups of neurons (e.g. excitatory and inhibitory cells, or subtypes thereof), or even individual neurons, coordinate their spiking on different temporal and spatial scales. To address particular aspects of this question (its scope is more than sufficient to keep lots and lots of systems neuroscientists busy for any foreseeable future) I rely on electrophysiological in vivo recordings and computational modelling.

Funding

The research is presently funded by Academy of Medical Sciences / Wellcome Trust Springboard award and by a New Investigator grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Collaborators

Centre for Systems Neuroscience, University of Leicester.

Cortical Processing Laboratory, UCL.

Publications