Séverine Durand, Ph.D.

Scientist III

Neural Dynamics OpenScope

Bio:

Séverine Durand joined the Allen Institute in 2012 as a scientist for the neural coding team to perform in vivo electrophysiology in the mouse visual cortex. Her postdoctoral research focused on properties of the primary visual system in a model of visual deprivation and a model of Rett Syndrome at RIKEN in Japan and at Harvard University in Boston, using electrophysiology and behavioral tasks. She received an undergraduate degree in physiology and M.S. in cognitive neuroscience from the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France. Duran obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Zurich in 2004, where she started in vivo electrophysiology, inquiring about visual properties of receptive fields in V1 and LGN and the role of cortical suppression in processing visual stimuli.

Research Focus:

I have always been fascinated by how our brain masters the treatment of millions of cues in our everyday environment, and especially the amazing tasks performed by our visual system. How do cells communicate to each other, how do they integrate information, how can we understand neural coding, and what is the role of different cell types? I hope to be able to dissect some of these questions here at the Allen Institute by recording directly from structures such as V1 and LGN. I aim to provide large-scale high-quality data that will help to better understand the first stages of visual information processing.