David L. Ferster

Dr. David L. Ferster is a Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University. Ferster is known for his work studying the circuitry of mammalian visual cortex, specifically how neuronal circuits perform complex computations that underlie perception, cognition, and motion. The mammalian visual cortex performs a remarkable transformation of the information it receives from the eye. Neurons in the cortex are sensitive to the orientation, motion, depth and size of objects in ways that the eye is not, which means that the cortex extracts this information from the nonspecific input it receives from the eye. The Ferster lab studied the neuronal mechanisms by which this cortex performs this transformation. In order to do this, they developed a technique known as in vivo whole-cell patch recording, which made possible unprecedented studies of neuronal circuitry throughout the nervous system. Their most recent studies focused on the manner in which excitatory and inhibitory inputs interact, the mechanisms of oscillatory firing and the origin of orientation and direction selectivity in cortical cells. Ferster’s numerous publications appear in prominent journals including Journal of Neuroscience, Nature, Neuron, and Science.