Visual and tactile signal processing for high-order object recognition (C09)

• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2015 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 154113120

To explore how we perceive objects that we manipulate or touch we performed electro-physiological recordings in behaving non-human primates and identified the essential connectivity patterns of the fronto-parietal grasp network in a fMRI resting state analysis. We now plan to further study the planning and execution of grasping actions in the primate brain by (i) using monkey fMRI and a delayed hand grasping task to explore which cortical areas are involved, (ii) using chemical and optogenetic inactivation of sensory cortical areas to understand their involvement during behavioural tasks, and (iii) developing a recurrent neural network model which will explain the processing of visual and tactile input signals in these areas.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 889: Cellular Mechanisms of Sensory Processing
• Applicant Institution: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Hansjörg Scherberger