Self lab
Keywords: vision, memory, feedback, visual cortex, thalamus, hippocampus, perception, figure-ground segregation, border-ownership
My name is Matthew Self. I am a neuroscientist trying to understand how the brain processes visual information to guide behaviour and form memories. My research focusses on the interactions between higher cortical visual areas, the thalamus, the hippocampus and early visual areas such as V1. I am particularly interested in the function of top-down, or feedback, connections which carry information about context, predictions based on experience and memory, and hypotheses about 3D structure back to the early visual cortex. I measure neural activity in epileptic patients who have had electrodes implanted in their brain as part of their treatment. I also record and modulate neural activity in mice using Neuropixels electrodes, two-photon imaging and optogenetic techniques to study neural activity at multiple levels of processing.
Biography
I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before my PhD training in the lab of Prof. Semir Zeki at University College London. I then worked as a post-doc in the lab of Prof. Pieter Roelfsema in Amsterdam before being appointed Senior Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. I am now a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow.