Vision is our most important sense, and nearly half of our cerebral cortex is devoted to vision. This course focuses on understanding how the cellular properties of neurons and the pattern of synaptic connections among neurons allow the visual system to decipher incoming information. The course will begin with a review of fundamental neurobiology concepts and methods, before concentrating on photoreception and synaptic processing in the retina, which is arguably the best understood part of the brain. The rest of the course will survey visual processing beyond the retina, with an emphasis on the primary visual cortex. A major focus of the lectures and paper discussions will be to help students understand the experiments that led to the development of current views.

Course Requirements:

PowerPoint slides will be uploaded to the course web site at least several days before each relevant lecture, while all 12 journal papers will be posted on the site at the beginning of the semester. It is essential that you come to class having already studied the lecture slides or the assigned paper so that you will be ready for that day’s discussion. There will be a multiple-choice quiz about each lecture or paper, and all quizzes will be due on Canvas by the end of the semester.

Intended Audience:

Undergrads, grad students, postdocs

Class Format:

An 80-min lecture and an 80-min paper discussion each week.