Matteo Carandini (born 1967) is a

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

who studies the

visual system The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the a ...

. He is currently a professor at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, where he co-directs th
Cortical Processing Laboratory
with Kenneth D Harris. He studies the

visual cortex The visual cortex of the brain is the area of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe. Sensory input originating from the eyes travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus in the thalamus and ...

at the level of individual neurons and populations of neurons, their intercommunication within the visual cortex, with a particular interest in the functions of the eye, thalamus, and the early visual areas of the cerebral cortex. Carandini conducts his research with the goal of contributing to the knowledge of how the brain processes visual information in the human brain and he works primarily with mice. His grandfather was ambassador Nicolo Carandini, and his uncle is archaeologist

Andrea Carandini Andrea Carandini (born November 3, 1937) is an Italian professor of archaeology specialising in ancient Rome. Among his many excavations is the villa of Settefinestre. Biography The son of Italian diplomat Count Nicolò Carandini (1896–1972 ...

Achievements

In the 1990s, working with David Heeger and J. Anthony Movshon he refined and provided evidence for Heeger's normalization model of V1 responses. Together with David Ferster he characterized the relationship between synaptic excitation, synaptic inhibition, membrane potential, and firing rate in visual cortex and discovered that prolonged visual stimulation causes a tonic hyperpolarization in V1

neurons A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. N ...

. Further work characterized fast adaptive mechanisms in the responses of the early

, compared cortical responses to the properties of natural images and tested the resulting models' responses to complex natural stimuli. More recent work concerns the way that non-visual information affects activity in the classical

, including the discovery that neurons in primary visual cortex encode bodily movements and even information about an animal's location in space, a property previously thought to be restricted to higher-order brain systems such as

place cells A place cell is a kind of pyramidal neuron in the hippocampus that becomes active when an animal enters a particular place in its environment, which is known as the place field. Place cells are thought to act collectively as a cognitive represe ...

. Carandini has contributed to the development of

Neuropixels Neuropixels probes are electrodes developed in 2017 to record the activity of hundreds of neurons in the brain. The probes are based on CMOS technology and have 1,000 recording sites arranged in two rows on a thin, 1-cm long shank. The probes ar ...

probes, and is a founding member of the

International Brain Laboratory The 'International Brain Laboratory'' (IBL) is a collaborative research group that aims to develop the first global model of decision making in mice. In its first phase, IBL members are recording 100,000's of neurons across virtually all brain stru ...

, which uses this technology to study how brain activity subserves sensory discrimination. He is an advocate of

Open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

publishing in scientific research.

External links

Home page BibliographyNeuroTree

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carandini, Matteo 1967 births

Matteo Matteo is the Italian form of the given name Matthew. Another form is Mattia. The Hebrew meaning of Matteo is "gift of god". Matteo can also be used as a patronymic surname, often in the forms of de Matteo, De Matteo or DeMatteo, meaning " escen ...

Living people American neuroscientists Italian neuroscientists Academics of University College London