The board of trustees of the Attempto Foundation of the University of Tübingen has decided to award Maik Stüttgen this year's Attempto Award for his recent paper, "Integration of vibrotactile signals for whisker-related perception in rats is governed by short time constants: comparison of neurometric and psychometric performance", appeared in The Journal of Neuroscience last year.
The paper investigated mechanisms of sensory coding in the primary somatosensory ("barrel") cortex of the rat. The animals' ability for detecting multi-pulse tactile stimuli was measured simultaneously with the activity of single neurons in barrel cortex. The authors constructed a theoretical model which successfully relates neural response patterns to both detection probabilities and reaction times of the animals, thus bridging the gap between neural activity on the one hand and sensation and perception on the other.
The award ceremony will take place on October 12th Tübingen.