Christof Koch Journalist Profile

Articles

Experiments Prepare to Test Whether Consciousness Arises from Quantum Weirdness

Aug 8, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Hartmut Neven |Christof Koch

The brain is a mere piece of furniture in the vastness of the cosmos, subject to the same physical laws as asteroids, electrons or photons. On the surface, its three pounds of neural tissue seem to have little to do with quantum mechanics, the textbook theory that underlies all physical systems, since quantum effects are most pronounced on microscopic scales.
Understanding Electric Brain Stimulation Through the Reciprocity Theorem

Aug 6, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Christof Koch |Gaute Einevoll |Torbjorn V Ness

AbstractLee et al. recently reported robust, frequency-independent subthreshold membrane coupling to extracellular current stimulation across cell classes and brain regions, in both human and mice cortical slices. Specifically, small extracellular sinusoidal electrical stimulations (ES) at frequencies between 1-140 Hz induced a local oscillation in the extracellular potential, leading to sub-threshold (< 0.5 mV) sinusoidal potentials across the cell membrane of nearby cell bodies.
Author Correction: BigNeuron: a resource to benchmark and predict performance of algorithms for automated tracing of neurons in light microscopy datasets | Nature Methods

Aug 1, 2024 | nature.com | Linus Manubens-Gil |Yufeng Liu |Alessandro Bria |Lei Qu |Lin Gu |Weidong Cai | +20 more

Correction to: Nature Methods https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-01848-5, published online 17 April 2023. In the version of the article initially published, the Acknowledgements did not include thanks to H. Mansvelder (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), C. de Kock (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), R. Benavides-Piccione and J. DeFelipe (Instituto Cajal - CSIC). Additionally, Supplementary Table 1 has been updated to separate rows 27 and 28.
Cell-class-specific electric field entrainment of neural activity

Jul 25, 2024 | cell.com | soo lee |Konstantinos Kozalakis |Fahimeh Baftizadeh |Luke Campagnola |Tim Jarsky |Christof Koch | +1 more

Lee et al. study the impact of oscillatory electric fields on neuronal activity across different cell types, brain regions, and species. Electric fields strongly entrain both cellular subthreshold responses and spike timing and phase, with entrainment properties being stimulation frequency and cell class specific across areas.
A new approach to the mystery of consciousness - The Boston Globe

May 7, 2024 | bostonglobe.com | Christof Koch

Within seconds, my entire field of view became engulfed by dark, swirling smoke. The space around me fractured into a thousand hexagons and shattered. The speed with which this happened left no time to regret the situation I had gotten myself into. As I was sucked into a black hole, my last thought was that with the dying of the light, I too would die. And I did. I ceased to exist in any recognizable way, shape, or form.
Backward masking in mice requires visual cortex - Nature Neuroscience

Nov 13, 2023 | nature.com | Samuel Gale |Christof Koch

AbstractVisual masking can reveal the timescale of perception, but the underlying circuit mechanisms are not understood. Here we describe a backward masking task in mice and humans in which the location of a stimulus is potently masked. Humans report reduced subjective visibility that tracks behavioral deficits. In mice, both masking and optogenetic silencing of visual cortex (V1) reduce performance over a similar timecourse but have distinct effects on response rates and accuracy.
What Does It ‘Feel’ Like to Be a Chatbot?

Sep 8, 2023 | scientificamerican.com | Christof Koch

The questions of what subjective experience is, who has it and how it relates to the physical world around us have preoccupied philosophers for most of recorded history. Yet the emergence of scientific theories of consciousness that are quantifiable and empirically testable is of much more recent vintage, occurring within the past several decades. Many of these theories focus on the footprints left behind by the subtle cellular networks of the brain from which consciousness emerges.
Sharing neurophysiology data from the Allen Brain Observatory

Jul 11, 2023 | elifesciences.org | Joshua H. Siegle |Christof Koch |Elodie Hinnekens |Shira M Lupkin

Decision letter after peer review:Thank you for submitting your article "Sharing Neurophysiology Data from the Allen Brain Observatory: Lessons Learned" for consideration by eLife. Your article has been reviewed by 2 peer reviewers, including Markus Meister as the Reviewing Editor and Reviewer #1, and the evaluation has been overseen by Joshua Gold as the Senior Editor.