Under the supervision of Dr. Mark van Rossum (Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation) and Dr. Ian Duguid (Centre for Integrative Physiology), I studied the link between behaviour and the neural activity in the motor cortex. In particular, I investigated how changes in brain state affect the correlation structure and input integration in different cortical layers. I combined cutting edge experimental techniques with analytical and computational modelling. In particular:

- I recorded intracellularly from pyramidal neurons in the motor cortex of awake mice, that were head restrained and free to walk on a treadmill;
- I analysed the experimental data, finding common patterns in the noisy signals;
- I used Bayesian inference tools to infer the structure of the inputs to a neuron, by observing its membrane potential;
- I performed spiking networks simulations to reproduce and justify my experimental findings.