David Terman, Ph.D.

Professor
Department of Mathematics

Ph.D.: University of Minnesota
Posdoctoral Training: University of Wisconsin, Charles Conley

Contact Information
550 Math Tower
231 W. 18th Avenue
Columbus, OH  43210
PHONE: (614) 292-5285
FAX: (614) 292-1479
E-MAIL: terman.1@osu.edu

Link to NLM PubMed publications list for David Terman (last 10 years)

Research Area:

Oscillations and other patterns of neuronal activity arise throughout the central nervous system.  This activity has been observed in sensory processing, motor activities, and learning, and has been implicated in the generation of sleep rhythms, epilepsy, and Parkinson tremors.  Oscillatory behavior also arises in such areas as respiration, movement and secretion.  Basic questions involve how these rhythms are generated, how they are modulated and what the behavioral correlates of the neuronal activities are. 

Current Research:

Mathematical models for the neuronal activity often display an incredibly rich structure of dynamic behavior.  A primary focus of our research is to develop mathematical and numerical techniques for analyzing this behavior.  Another focus is to characterize how the intrinsic and synaptic properties of the neurons within a network interact to shape the network's emergent population rhythm.  This will hopefully help experimentalists and theoreticians to better interpret data, create more sophisticated models and design new experiments.

Ongoing projects include analysis of mathematical models for sleep rhythms, certain norms of epilepsy, scene segmentation and propagating wave-like activity in inhibitory networks.