Representational similarity in marmoset an human visual motion processing

A core challenge for understanding brain function such as vision is connecting the different scales of observation. Animal models provide unique opportunities to reveal brain mechanisms on the level of individual cells and cell populations with exciting new technologies. However, the integration with human neuroscience and the available non-invasive methods for measuring neuronal activity are lacking. Without a connection, the transfer of insights between the scales is severely limited. This often makes a clinical translation of the ground-breaking findings obtained with invasive methods impossible.
We propose to take on this challenge and overcome the limitations presented by isolated experiments by performing a ‘tandem experiment’. The tandem experiment is a fully matched experimental set up featuring multi-electrode recordings in the marmoset monkey and noninvasive magnetencephalography (MEG) in humans viewing identical visual stimuli. The recordings in the marmoset will enable us to assess signals from individual brain cells and cell populations, while the non-invasive recordings in humans provide electrophysiological measurements of larger populations of neurons and large-scale networks. This will enable us to establish a bridge between the neural processing of the primate visual circuits from a single cell
level to large-scale networks and between the marmoset model and humans.