29.10.15: Sukbin Lim

Information about external stimuli is thought to be stored in cortical circuits through experience-dependent modifications of synaptic connectivity. These modifications of network connectivity would lead to changes in neuronal activity as a particular stimulus is repeatedly encountered. In this work, we ask what plasticity rules are consistent with the differences in the statistics of the visual response to novel and familiar stimuli in inferior temporal cortex, an area underlying visual object recognition. We introduce a method that allows one to infer the dependence of the presumptive learning rule on postsynaptic firing rate. Application of the method to experimental data obtained in monkeys performing visual learning tasks and network simulation implementing a rule extracted from data will also be discussed.