Ben Shababo

• University of California, Berkeley

The neocortex is functionally organized into layers. Layer four receives the densest bottom up sensory inputs, while layers 2/3 and 5 receive top down inputs that may convey predictive information. A subset of cortical somatostatin (SST) neurons, the Martinotti cells, gate top down input by inhibiting the apical dendrites of pyramidal cells in laye...

The connectivity patterns of excitatory and inhibitory microcircuits are fundamental to computation in the neocortex. Highly specific excitatory projections form a stereotyped microcircuit linking the six cortical layers, but it is unclear whether inhibitory circuits are structured according to a similar layer-based logic or instead wire up non-sel...

The development of optical methods to activate neurons with single-cell resolution has enabled systematic mapping of inhibitory connections. In contrast, optical mapping of excitatory connections between pyramidal neurons (PCs) has been a major challenge due to their high densities in cortical tissue and their weak and stochastic connectivity. Here...

Background: Investigation of neural circuit functioning often requires statistical interpretation of events in subthreshold electrophysiological recordings. This problem is non-trivial because recordings may have moderate levels of structured noise and events may have distinct kinetics. In addition, novel experimental designs that combine optical...

Investigation of neural circuit functioning often requires statistical interpretation of events in subthreshold electrophysiological recordings. This problem is non-trivial because recordings may have moderate levels of structured noise and events may have distinct kinetics. In addition, novel experimental designs that combine optical and electroph...

Inferring connectivity in neuronal networks remains a key challenge in statistical neuroscience. The "common input" problem presents the major roadblock: it is difficult to reliably distinguish causal connections between pairs of observed neurons from correlations induced by common input from unobserved neurons. Since available recording techniques...

With the advent of modern stimulation techniques in neuroscience, the opportunity arises to map neuron to neuron connectivity. In this work, we develop a method for efficiently inferring posterior distributions over synaptic strengths in neural microcircuits. The input to our algorithm is data from experiments in which action potentials from putati...

BCI (Brain Computer Interface) technology shows great promise in the field of assistive robotics. In particular, severely impaired individuals lacking the use of their hands and arms would benefit greatly from a robotic grasping system that can be controlled by a simple and intuitive BCI. In this paper we describe an end-to-end robotic grasping sys...