Spatial Perception and Memory lab

[pb_slideshow group=”0″] “Space is nothing else than the form of all phenomena of the external sense, that is, the subjective condition of the sensibility, under which alone external intuition is possible.”
_{Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.}

How is space represented in the brain? How do we form our spatial memory? How are space and time related in the brain? What is the neuronal code for space? How does our spatial representation affect behavior? The lab, headed by Dr. Dori Derdikman, which belongs to the Neuroscience group in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Haifa, Israel, aims at researching these and related questions. We use diverse methods to conduct neuroscience research, including state-of-the-art electrophysiological recordings using tetrodes from awake-behaving animals, calcium imaging using miniature endoscopes, optogenetic and chemogenetic methods, and mathematical modeling. The multi-disciplinary work in our lab hosts collaborations between biologists, electrical engineers, medical researchers, physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians, all under the umbrella of brain science. We record neurons in the brain’s spatial cognitive map system, including grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, place cells in the hippocampus, and head-direction cells. We strive to understand the neural networks that encode our perception and dictate the animal’s behavior in such spaces.