Prof. Dr. Kevan Martin

Institute of Neuroinformatics University of Zurich / ETH Zurich Winterthurerstrasse 190 8057 Zürich Tel. +41 44 635 3051 kevan.martin@ini.phys.ethz.ch

Main Goals, Keywords

Every thought, every idea, every memory, every decision, and every action we have and make, arises from the activity of neurons in our brains. The results of some of this activity surround us: household objects, books, technology and art. Of all brain structures, the neocortex, which forms over 80% of the volume of the human brain is, arguably, the most critical to what makes us human. This is a paradox, because the basic local architecture of the neocortex in all mammals, from mouse to man, appears to be very similar and is determined by the laminar distribution of relatively few types of excitatory and inhibitory neurons organized according to common principles of connectivity. My research goal is to answer just two questions: 'what is neocortex?'and, 'what does it do?'

Previous and Current Research

• Circuits of Neocortex
• Cortical Circuits underlying Plasticity
• DAISY Project
  

Selected Publications

• da Costa NM, Martin KA. Sparse reconstruction of brain circuits: Or, how to survive without a microscopic connectome. Neuroimage. 2013 Apr 25. doi:pii: S1053-8119(13)00401-1. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.04.054. [Epub ahead of print]
• Martin KA, Schröder S. Functional heterogeneity in neighboring neurons of cat primary visual cortex in response to both artificial and natural stimuli. J Neurosci. 2013 Apr 24;33(17):7325-44. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4071-12.2013.
• Martin KA, Spühler IA. The fine structure of the dopaminergic innervation of area 10 of macaque prefrontal cortex. Eur J Neurosci. 2013 Apr;37(7):1061-71. doi: 10.1111/ejn.12124. Epub 2013 Jan 21.
• Douglas, Rodney J. and Martin, Kevan A.C. Behavioral architecture of the cortical sheet, Current Biology, Vol 22:(No 24) 1033-1038, 2012 

Selected Lectures, Seminars or Colloquia

• Kolloquium in Neuroinformatik
  
• Computational Vision
  

URL

http://www.ini.uzh.ch/people/kevan