Ueli Rutishauser, Ph.D.

• Professor and Board of Governors Chair in Neurosciences
• Director at Center for Neural Science and Medicine and Human Neurophysiology Research
• Department of Neurosurgery
• Cedars-Sinai/Caltech

Probing human learning and memory at the single-neuron level

The decisions we make, the memories we form, and the skills we learn define each of us as individual beings. While much has been learned about how circuits of neurons implement simple individual tasks, little is known about how such circuits give rise to human cognition.  We are probing these questions by recording from populations of individual neurons in human subjects undergoing neurosurgical procedures and by developing novel computational tools to understand population codes from the point of view of neural geometries. I will discuss new insights we recently made on (i) how disentangled abstract representations in the hippocampus enable rapid learning, (ii) evidence for generative processes in visual cortex that allow us to re-live past experiences through imagination, and (iii) episodic memory formation facilitated by cognitive boundaries. Our findings reveal single-cell correlates of key aspects of human cognition and suggest specific interventions for new treatments for memory disorders.

Faculty Host: Dr. Daeyeol Lee