Dr. Boynton joined the faculty of the University of Rochester in 1952 as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. In 1963, Dr. Boynton founded the University of Rochester's Center for Visual Science (CVS), and served as director of CVS until 1971. He was well known for his research on the neurophysiological processes in the eye and brain that underlie vision. His book, "Human Color Vision" is a standard text studied by others in this area of science. He also published more than 1,500 pages in his more-than-40-year career. The CVS Boynton Colloquium Series, which features leading researchers across the interdisciplinary field of vision research, is named in his honor.

Upcoming Boynton Colloquia

April 24, 2024
3:00 p.m., Rm 2-6408, K207 Auditorium & Zoom (Register for the webinar https://tinyurl.com/usreyboynton)

W. Martin Usrey, UC Davis

Feedforward and Feedback Interactions between Thalamus and Cortex for Vision

The thalamus and cerebral cortex are interconnected by a dense network of feedforward and feedback circuits. In the visual system, the response properties of neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus and primary visual cortex (V1) are governed by the anatomical organization of these connections and the temporal patterns of impulse arrival. Results will be presented from experiments using multielectrode recordings and optogenetic manipulation to examine the specificity of neuronal connections and the role of spike timing and behavioral modulation in the reciprocal exchange of information between the LGN and V1 in the alert macaque monkey. These results reveal a striking relationship between the parallel feedforward and feedback processing streams, as well as the biophysical properties that govern spike transfer and the encoding of visual information in neuronal spike trains.