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Office: JE 378
Phone: (614) 292-6159
Email: aoster@mbi.osu.edu
Mentors:
Personal homepage: http://people.mbi.ohio-state.edu/aoster/
Research Area
Andrew's biological research focuses are neuroscience and development, whereas dynamical systems along with bifurcation theory and perturbation methods make up his principal mathematical interests. In general, mathematical modeling interests him, particularly when it relates to physiology.
His dissertation work at the University of Utah, under the direction of Dr. Paul Bressloff, was on the development of the primary visual cortex (V1), studying the emerging pattern formation associated with the plasticity in the afferents connecting the thalamus and V1. In its mature state, the primary visual cortex is dominated by regions that receive predominantly monocular drive, i.e., are mostly left or right eye driven. Such a region is referred to as an ocular dominance (OD) patch or stripe, depending upon its shape. For instance, in the cat the OD pattern is said to be blotchy, whereas in the macaque monkey, it has a stripe-like morphology.
His dissertation work included two problems regarding cortical development. In the first problem, he and collaborators modeled the effects of cortical growth on ocular dominance patterns and showed that with sufficient cortical growth instabilities in an OD map can occur at which point additional OD columns are inserted. The second problem in his dissertation work was to try to understand how OD columns develop with another feature of V1, the cytochrome oxidase blobs. In the upper layers of the primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey are regions that are more metabolically active, receive direct thalamic input from the koniocelllular pathway, and stain for cytochrome oxidase (CO); these structures are referred to as CO blobs. The CO blobs are aligned in the center of the OD stripes and have an intrinsic spacing within an OD stripe. He considered a detailed laminar representation of cortex, in order to examine the joint formation of the ocular dominance pattern and the cytochrome oxidase blobs.
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