Sliman Bensmaia, PhD
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| Neural Coding and the Neural Basis of Perception. |
| We are primarily interested in neural coding and the neural basis of perception.
We combine psychophysics, peripheral and cortical neurophysiology, and computational methods to investigate the tactile processing of form, motion, texture, and vibration. The general approach, pioneered by Vernon Mountcastle, consists in measuring an aspect of perception on human subjects then recording the responses evoked in peripheral afferents and in cortical neurons in macaque monkeys. Importantly, the same stimuli are used in both psychophysical and neurophysiological experiments. The objective is to discover the aspect of the neural response that accounts for the measured behavior at each stage of perceptual processing. We are also interested in developing models of transduction for the mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin of humans and macaques, and in investigating multi-sensory interactions involving the sense of touch. In our studies of tactile form and motion perception, we use a unique stimulator, consisting of 400 independently-controlled pins, arrayed over a 1cm2 area, to generate and deliver our stimuli. http://www.mb.jhu.edu/somlab/400probe/index.html. |
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