Research

Embodied decision making

Decisions as choices between available motor actions

Causal manipulation of persistent activity

Using chemogenetic & pharmacological methods

Feedback & context encoding

Feedback influences basic contextual effects like surround suppression

Natural image processing in V1

Specific image related information is fed back to V1 from downstream areas

Embodied decision making

In the parietal association cortex, neurons that are involved in planning the motor action needed to report a decision reflect evolving decision processes. Thus perceptual decision making is implemented in the brain as a process of choosing between available motor actions rather than as a process of representing the properties of the sensory stimulus.

Shushruth S, Zylberberg A & Shadlen MN. Current Biology (2022)
Shushruth S*, Mazurek M* & Shadlen MN. Journal of Neuroscience (2018)

Causal manipulation of persistent activity

Neurons in association cortex have the ability to maintain persistently elevated activity in the absence of any sensory stimulation. This persistent activity can support many complex computations, like accumulating evidence over time to form a decision. We are using chemogenetic and pharmacological approaches to causally manipulate persistent activity.

Jeurissen D*, Shushruth S*, et al. Neuron (2022)
Shushruth S. Journal of Neuroscience (2015)