Colloquium
Time: 11:00am, Aug 3, 2026
Venue: Lecture Hall, Shanghai Brain Center
Speaker: Prof. Kristine Krug
Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg
Host：Dr. Vishal Kapoor
Biography:
The main focus of Kristine Krug's research is to elucidate the neuronal signals and circuits that shapes our vivid perceptual experience of the dynamic, three-dimensional world around us. Kristine undertook her DPhil at Oxford University researching map formation in the visual cortex of hamsters and ferrets with Ian D. Thompson as a Wellcome Prize Scholar. After postdoctoral research positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, and in Oxford, UK, where she began to work on the neural mechanisms of 3D visual perception in the macaque, she was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin followed by a University Research Fellowships to establish her own lab at Oxford. In 2014, she was promoted to Associate Professor in Neuroscience at Oxford. Kristine moved in 2019 to the Otto-von-Guericke-University and the Leibniz-Institute in Neurobiology in Magdeburg, Germany, as Heisenberg- Professor (DFG) and Chair in Sensory Physiology.
Abstract:
Perceptual decisions are shaped in an intricate network of cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical circuits. For decisions about 3D-motion stimuli, this network involves the columnar architecture of extrastriate visual cortical area V5/MT and its input from earlier visual cortical areas, lateral intraparietal area (LIP) and the pulvinar nuclei. The contribution of individual nodes has been established through electrophysiological recordings of single neurons during active performance of behavioural tasks and importantly also by causal methods, especially electrical microstimulation, which can be shown to alter behavioural performance. More recently, using small focal anatomical tracer injections, we have been able to identify the precise topographic nature of this connectivity, both from one structure to another and also intrinsically within cortical areas. Taken together, these pathways form several distinct processing loops that act together to dynamically shape perceptual decisions.