Jean-Pascal Pfister

His research is mainly focused on learning and memory. Trained as a physicist, he is interested in developing analytical models of synaptic plasticity with a stronger focus on a specific form of plasticity called Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP). Those models try to answer the following questions: 1. what is the most compact and yet accurate description of STDP? 2. what are the functional roles of synapses that elicit STPD? He is currently working on the role of STDP on the formation of an associative memory. He co-developed a learning rule based on triplet of spikes instead of pairs of spikes as usually done. This learning rule better fits experimental data and can be mapped to a BCM learning rule (left figure) and therefore elicits input selectivity (right figure).