This will be a virtual seminar (no in-person)--we will return to in-person/hybrid seminars next week.

https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/
 <https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/89900959041>89900959041
 <https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/89900959041>

 Please feel free to circulate to people who might be interested in
 attending.

Cortical Control of Brainstem Neuromodulatory Systems in Motivated Behavior

What does it mean to see with a bionic eye? While modern visual prosthetics can generate flashes of light, they don’t yet restore natural vision. What might bionic vision actually look like? Why do some users struggle to interpret what they see, while others find ways to adapt? And why do many ultimately stop using their implants?

Degenerative retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration cause irreversible vision loss in more than 10 million people worldwide. Although there is no cure for these diseases, advances in medicine and technology are enabling the possibility of restoring sight to the blind. Analogous to cochlear implants, retinal prostheses ('bionic eyes') use a grid of electrodes to stimulate surviving retinal cells in order to evoke visual percepts.

Michael Dickinson is the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering and Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving his PhD from the University of Washington in 1989, Dr. Dickinson was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington. He joined the faculty at Caltech in 2002. Dr.

Recent developments in mouse physiology and optogenetics have enabled the study of cortical microcircuits underlying simple neural computations. Combining these approaches with behavioral paradigms originally developed for primates promises to enable circuit-level investigation of cognitive processes in mice.

Consciousness and the Social Brain

Michael J. Ryan is the Clark Hubbs Regents Professor in Zoology at The University of Texas at Austin and Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama since 1982. He received his PhD in Neurobiology & Behavior from Cornell University and was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley before beginning a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, where he has remained since 1984. Dr.