Talk given by Dan Butts, University of Maryland. Given to the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at UC Berkeley.

Abstract.
The role of inhibition in sensory processing is often obscured in extracellular recordings, because the absence of a neuronal response associated with inhibition might also be explained by a simple lack of excitation. However, increasingly, evidence from intracellular recordings demonstrates important roles of inhibition in shaping the stimulus selectivity of sensory neurons in both the visual and auditory systems. We have developed a nonlinear modeling approach that can identify putative excitatory and inhibitory inputs to a neuron using standard extracellular recordings, and have applied these techniques to understand the role of inhibition in shaping sensory processing in visual and auditory areas. In pre-cortical visual areas (retina and LGN), we find that inhibition likely plays a role in generating temporally precise responses, and mediates adaptation to changing contrast. In an auditory pre-cortical area (inferior colliculus) identified inhibition has nearly identical appearance and functions in temporal processing and adaptation. Thus, we predict common roles of inhibition in these sensory areas, and more generally demonstrate general methods for characterizing the nonlinear computations that comprise sensory processing.

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