Assistant Professor - Department of Neuroscience Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Techology, 2000 One Baylor Plaza Baylor College of Medicine Houston TX, 77030 Telephone: 713-798-4071 - Fax: 713-798-2874 Email: astolias@bcm.edu

The goal of our research is to understand how visual information is perceived, learned and used to guide behavior. These visually-based processes rely on activation patterns in neural circuits distributed across more than 20 distinct regions of the primate brain. Therefore to fully understand the neural mechanisms of vision, it is essential to study networks of neurons. Although these issues have long been appreciated as fundamental, research examining the properties of networks of neurons in primates has only recently become possible with the advent of techniques like chronic multi-electrode recordings. For our studies, we use chronic multi-tetrode recordings which enable us to record simultaneously from many neurons across multiple brain areas in awake, behaving primates. Chronic tetrode recordings provide us with a unique opportunity to study learning since we can record from the same neurons across multiple days. These experiments are done in combination with behavioral, fMRI and computational approaches. Improved understanding of how visual perception and learning are accomplished through computations distributed across neuronal populations will help us understand the principles of neural coding. It is also likely to have important implications for the theory of artificial intelligence and robotics and, eventually, for the successful development of brain-machine interface systems including visual prostheses.

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Macke, J. H., P. Berens, A. S. Ecker, A. S. Tolias and M. Bethge: Generating Spike Trains with Specified Correlation Coefficients. Neural Computation Epub ahead (in press) (08 2008)

Berens P, Keliris GA, Ecker AS, Logothetis NK and Tolias AS (2008). Comparing the feature selectivity of the gamma-band of the local field potential and the underlying spiking activity in primate visual cortex. Front. Syst. Neurosci.

Tolias, A. S., A. S. Ecker, A. G. Siapas, A. Hoenselaar, G. A. Keliris and N. K. Logothetis (2007). Recording Chronically from the same Neurons in Awake, Behaving Primates. Journal of Neurophysiology 98(6), 3780-3790.

Tolias A.S., Sultan F, Augath M, Oeltermann A, Tehovnik E.J., Schiller PH, Logothetis N.K. (2005) Mapping cortical activity elicited by electrical microstimulation using fMRI in the macaque. Neuron, 48, 901-11.

Tolias A.S., Keliris G., Smirnakis S.M., Logothetis N.K. (2005). Neurons in macaque area V4 acquire directional tuning after adaptation to motion stimuli. Nature Neuroscience, 8(5), 591-3.

Smirnakis S.M, Brewer A.A, Schmid M.C, Tolias A.S., Sch Augath M., Inhoffen W., Wandell B.A., Logothetis N.K. (2005). Adult macaque V1 fails to reorganize in the months following homonymous retinal lesions. Nature, 435(7040), 288-9.

Schiller P.H., Slocum W., Carvey C., Tolias A.S. (2004) Are express saccades generated under natural viewing conditions? European J. of Neuroscience, 20(9), 2467-73.

D. G, C. E. Rasmussen, A.S. Tolias, F. Sinz and N.K. Logothetis (2004). Modelling Spikes with Mixtures of Factor Analysers. Pattern Recognition, Proc. DAGM Symposium,26, 391-398. (Eds.) Rasmussen, C. E., H. H. Buelthoff, M. A. Giese and B. Schoelkopf, Springer, Berlin

Eichhorn E., Tolias A.S., Zien A., Matle K., Rasmussen C., Weston J., Logothetis N.K., Schoelkopf B. (2004). Prediction on spike data using kernel algorithms. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 16, 1367-1374. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA

Kourtzi, Z., Tolias, A.S., Altmann, C.F., Augath, M., Logothetis, N.K. (2003). Integration of local features into global shapes. Monkey and human FMRI studies. Neuron 37, 333-46.

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• James Cotton (Neuroscience)
• Manivannan Subramaniyan (Neuroscience)
• Dimitri Yatsenko (Neuroscience)

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