Prof. Moshe Abeles
The Ernest and Mona Spiegel Prof. of Neurophysiology
Higher brain functions.
The aim of this research is to understand the neuronal mechanisms associated with the higher brain functions. Particular attention is paid to questions of neural codes for representing information and the mechanism for producing such codes and reading them. The research involves combined experimental and theoretical work. The experimental work is carried out in the laboratory of higher brain functions, extablished jointly with Dr. H. Bergman and Dr. E. Vaadia. Brain activity is recorded at three population sizes: local electric fields, aggregated activity of local neuronal populations, and isolated neurons. The subjects are monkeys trained to perform a variety of tasks. The theoretical work involves combining quantitative anatomy and cellular neurophysiology to assess the plausibility of a variety of circuits. Simulations are used to gain better insight into the properties of the computational models. Currently, the synfire chain model and the concept of coding by a sequence of synchronously firing sets of neurons are being actively pursued.
see also
M. Abeles, Local Cortical Circuits: An Electrophysiological Study, Springer-Verlag, 1982.
M. Abeles, Corticonics: Neural Circuits of the Cerebral Cortex, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
M. Abeles, H. Bergman, E. Margalit and E. Vaadia,"Spatiotemporal Firing Patterns in the Frontal Cortex of Behaving Monkeys", J. Neurophysiol. Vol. 70, No. 4., 1993.
M. Abeles, Y. Prut, H. Bergman, E. Vaadia and A. Aertsen, "Integration, Synchronicity and Periodicity", in A. Aertsen (ed.), Brain Theory: Spatio-temporal Aspects of Brain Function, Elsvier, Amsterdam, pp 149-181, 1993.