Emergence of organization and computation in neural circuits

Prof. Dr. Julijana Gjorgjieva 

Assistant Professor in Computational Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Technical University of Munich

The emergence of organization and computation in neural circuits 

How neural circuits become organized during early postnatal development based on patterns of spontaneous activity and different plasticity mechanisms. Prof. Julijana will show the emergence of organization at the sub-cellular and cellular level and discuss implications for computations implemented by these networks. These theoretical models and simulations are supported by experimental data and make numerous predictions for future experiments.

Zoom link 

Passcode: 959053

[Seminar] Intrinsic Reward in Birdsong Learning, Prof. Hahnloser

Professor Richard Hahnloser

Institute of Neuroinformatics,
University of Zurich and ETH Zurich

Zoom link: https://oist.zoom.us/j/98260915981?pwd=dWNFRVQrcUhCNWhrbGhtYWs0TEZPUT09

Passcode: 959053

Inter-Unit Neuroscience Journal Club

In our first monthly journal club meeting of 2021, Professor Gordon Arbuthnott of the Brian Mechanisms for Behaviour presents a recently published study: Striatal Bilateral Control of skilled forelimb movement. Everyone is welcome to join online. 

ZOOM SEMINAR (ONOS series): Hippobellum in health and disease: cerebellar influence on the hippocampus

 Hippobellum in health and disease: cerebellar influence on the hippocampus

Prof. Esther Krook-Magnuson, Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota

   Time: Thursday, Feb 18 at 10 am            Zoom link: https://oist.zoom.us/j/96422359435    

(ONOS seminar) Unraveling cortical circuits for perceptual decision making

OIST Neuroscience Online Seminar (ONOS)

Prof. Seung-Hee Lee, Associate Professor, Sensory Processing Lab, KAIST

Unraveling cortical circuits for perceptual decision making

Sensory information is a key environmental cue that makes animals guide their behavior. However, it is still unclear how cortical circuits permit appropriate responses to relevant sensory stimuli while inhibiting others. Here, we unraveled cortical circuits that are important for perceptual decision-making in mice performing Go/No-go tasks. We identified parietal and frontal circuits that show unique properties in integrating sensory information and guide action decisions. I will discuss how these circuits work in concert for animals to perform proper action decisions upon the sensory evidence. 

ZOOM LINK :  
https://oist.zoom.us/j/99896092525?pwd=ZVpMcEQ4SjBISnk4UzJqaFpyeEdOZz09

Meeting ID: 998 9609 2525
Passcode: 931719

Inter-Unit Neuroscience Journal Club (ZOOM)

Inter-unit journal club presentation by PhD student Thato Mokhothu, who will discuss a recent article from eNeuro entitled "Cerebellar Directed Optogenetic Intervention Inhibits Spontaneous Hippocampal Seizures in a Mouse Model of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy"

Visual information processing through the interplay between fast and slow pathways (ONOS)

Prof Si Wu of Peking University, China will give a talk for the OIST neuroscience online seminars (ONOS) series on the topic of "Visual information processing through the interplay between fast and slow pathways". Prof Wu is a PI of IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Center for Life Science at Peking University. He is also the Co-editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.

Inter-Unit Neuroscience Journal Club (ZOOM)

Inter-unit journal club presentation by Dr Sam Reiter, leader of the Computational Neuroethology Unit, who will discuss a recent article from Nature Methods entitled "EthoLoop: automated closed-loop neuroethology in naturalistic environments"

Meeting link: https://oist.zoom.us/j/95700149323?pwd=VWQxY0FGQmxVQmtUTVZ2SXRnMGx6dz09
Meeting ID: 957 0014 9323
Passcode: 855303

(ONOS SEMINAR) Neuroscience , Where are we going? From behavior to brain activity and vice versa  

ZOOM LINK IS HERE 

https://oist.zoom.us/j/92166985125?pwd=Mm9ldEQ0Z0xwaXRLdmYrT1ZtVVRKUT09

Meeting ID: 921 6698 5125
Passcode: 883637
 

Recent discussions in neuroscience have been arguing about the necessity of a revision to our approach in neuroscience. A common approach in neuroscience starts from a phenomenon such as attention or memory as defined from our psychological heritage, trying to find a brain correlate of this phenomenon. This method has been argued to be suffering from two main problems first is the loosely defined psychological terms and second is the correlation fallacy that has been a major concern in neuroscience. We invited two experts in neuroscience from both OIST and RIKEN trying to get their insight on this problem and how different experimental, mathematical and analytical techniques will help us frame a new path in neuroscience research.

Topic: ONOS discussion seminar 
Time: Oct 23, 2020 04:00 PM Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo

"Transforming visual information between areas V1 and MT" - Dr Nic Price, Monash University

An OIST neuroscience online seminars (ONOS) talk.

Abstract

The visual system is a complex, hierarchically-organised information processing network. Counter-intuitively, successive areas contain less information about a scene, but neural activity is structured to better represent specific information. For example, neurons in primate area MT convey little colour information, but motion direction can be linearly decoded from their activity. The ongoing activity of individual neurons is highly variable, meaning reliable computation depends on collaborative processing across neural populations. However, it remains unclear how visual information is reliably represented across neurons within an area, and how these representations are transformed between areas to extract specific stimulus properties. To address this, we record visually-evoked activity simultaneously from dozens of neurons in V1 and MT in marmosets.

We use decoding techniques to predict stimulus orientation or direction from activity across a neural population. This has allowed us to show that neural representations are affected by stimulus history: recent motion biases predictions in a manner consistent with perceptual illusions; and luminance and contrast changes affect orientation coding, again in a manner consistent with human sensitivity.

We study inter-area communication by comparing the timing of action potentials in V1 with local field potentials (LFP, a population measure of local dendritic activity) in MT. We have shown that action potentials preferentially occur at specific phases of the LFP, and that motion information is best communicated from V1 to MT at specific phases.

Collectively, this suggests that hierarchical information processing depends on action potentials in privileged subsets of neurons occurring in privileged time windows.

Zoom details

Zoom Meeting link:
https://oist.zoom.us/j/95700149323?pwd=VWQxY0FGQmxVQmtUTVZ2SXRnMGx6dz09

Meeting ID: 957 0014 9323
Passcode: 855303