Team

Staff Profiles

Scientist III

Severine 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 Interests

Research Interests 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.

Expertise

Electrophysiology

Research Programs

Neural coding

Survey of spiking in the mouse visual system reveals functional hierarchy

Nature
January 20, 2021

Siegle JH, Jia X, Durand S, Gale S, Bennett C, Graddis N, Heller G, Ramirez TK, Choi H, Luviano JA, Groblewski PA, Ahmed R, Arkhipov A, Bernard A, Billeh YN, Brown D, Buice MA, Cain N, Caldejon S, Casal L, Cho A, Chvilicek M, Cox TC, Dai K, Denman DJ, de Vries S., Dietzman R, Esposito L, Farrell C, Feng D, Galbraith J, Garrett M, Gelfand EC, Hancock N, Harris JA, Howard R, Hu B, Hytnen R, Iyer R, Jessett E, Johnson K, Kato I, Kiggins J, Lambert S, Lecoq J, Ledochowitsch P, Lee JH, Leon A, Li Y, Liang E, Long F, Mace K, Melchior J, Millman D, Mollenkopf T, Nayan C, Ng L, Ngo D, Nguyen T, Nicovich PR, North K, Ocker GK, Ollerenshaw D, Oliver M, Pachitariu M, Perkins J, Reding M, Reid D, Robertson M, Ronellenfitch K, Seid S, Slaughterbeck C, Stoecklin M, Sullivan D, Sutton B, Swapp J, Thompson C, Turner K, Wakeman W, Whitesell JD, Williams D, Williford A, Young R, Zeng H, Naylor S, Phillips JW, Reid RC, Mihalas S, Olsen SR, Koch C

Visual physiology of the Layer 4 cortical circuit in silico

PLoS Computational Biology
November 12, 2018

Arkhipov A, Gouwens NW, Billeh YN, Gratiy S, Iyer R, Wei Z, Xu Z, Berg J, Buice M, Cain N, da Costa N, de Vries S, Denman D, Durand S, Feng D, Jarsky T, Lecoq J, Lee B, Li L, Mihalas S, Ocker GK, Olsen SR, Reid RC, Soler-LLavina G, Sorensen SA, Wang Q, Waters J, Scanziani M, Koch C

NMDA receptor regulation prevents regression of visual cortical function in the absence of Mecp2

Neuron
December 2012

Durand S, Patrizi A, Quast KB, Hachigian L, Pavlyuk R, Saxena A, Carninci P, Hensch TK, Fagiolini M

Temporal properties of surround suppression in cat primary visual cortex

Visual Neuroscience
September 2007

Durand S, Freeman TCB, Carandini M

Suppression without inhibition in visual cortex

Neuron
August 2002

Durand S, Freeman TCB, Kiper D, Carandini M

Depth perception from pairs of overlapping cues in pictorial displays

Spatial Vision
2002

Dresp B, Durand S, Grossberg S