Talk by Prof. Dr. Israel Nelken (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Abstract: We recorded neural activity in the brains of freely-moving rats while they performed behavioral tasks for food reward. The behavioral state had strong effects on neuronal responses to sounds, with responses during behavior having more task-relevant information than responses during passive listening. Surprisingly, neuronal activity was associated also with non-auditory factors, such as running speed, head-to-body angle, and time in trial, even in the absence of sound. I will describe approaches for analyzing the fine-grained behavior of the animals and for deriving hypotheses about the nature of neural activity, in auditory cortex, that is not auditory driven.

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