Sami El-Boustani
Function: Professeur assistant
Group name: Experimental and Computational Neurosciences Laboratory
Group type: Main
Affiliations: Faculty of Medicine, Department of Basic Neurosciences
Domains: Development and Plasticity, Perception, Attention and Cognition, Sensory and Motor Systems
Keywords: learning, multisensory integration, perceptual inference, synaptic plasticity
Research activities
From a single synapse to simple behaviors, the nervous system exhibits rich and complex dynamics that convey every perception we experience and every action we make. In particular, extracting regularities in the environment to build predictions of forthcoming sensory percepts is an essential cognitive process, which animals use to adjust their behavior and achieve specific goals. Perceptual predictions originate from an internal representation of the world in the brain that is continuously shaped by new experiences and can guide behavior. Recent developments of genetically-encoded sensors and effectors along with novel behavioral paradigms have positioned mice as an ideal model to address these questions. In the laboratory, we study the emergence and influence of experience-dependent internal representations on sensory processing and perceptual decision-making in mice performing multisensory tasks. Our lab uses a combination of in vivo electrophysiology, wide-field imaging, two-photon microscopy, mouse behavior and molecular biology to address these questions.
Key publications
Anatomically and functionally distinct thalamocortical inputs to primary and secondary mouse whisker somatosensory cortices
Distinct contributions of whisker sensory cortex and tongue-jaw motor cortex in a goal-directed sensorimotor transformation
Locally coordinated synaptic plasticity shapes cell-wide plasticity of visual cortex neurons in vivo, Science
Response-dependent dynamics of cell-specific inhibition in cortical networks in vivo
Correlated input reveals coexisting coding schemes in a sensory cortex
Stable learning in stochastic network states
Hide the members of the Lab
Prof. Sami El-Boustani
+41 22 37 95 468
sami.el-boustani@unige.ch
Lucile Favero Montero
+41 22 37 95 815
lucile.faveropistoresi@unige.ch
Grihmalkin Foucher
+41 22 37 95 815
grihmalkin.foucher@etu.unige.ch
Maëlle Guyoton
+41 22 37 95 815
maelle.guyoton@unige.ch
Aude Imbruglia
+41 22 37 95 815
aude.imbruglia@unige.ch
Dimokratis Karamanlis
+41 22 37 95 815
dimokratis.karamanlis@unige.ch
Anas Masood
+41 22 37 95 815
anas.masood@unige.ch
Giulio Matteucci
+41 22 37 95 815
giulio.matteucci@unige.ch
Andrea Valderrama
+41 22 37 95 815
andrea.valderrama@etu.unige.ch
Contact
Faculté de médecine
Université de Genève
Email: Sami.El-boustani@unige.ch