"Chaotic attractors, complexity and beyond-Turing computational power in basal ganglia thalamo-cortical circuits" Alessandro Villa

Open Biology Unit would like to invite you to an upcoming seminar by Professor Alessandro Villa.

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Date: Thursday, February 12th, 2015
Time: 2:00p.m. - 3:00p.m.
Venue: Meeting Room D014, Lab1

[Speaker]
Alessandro Villa. Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Dean, Neuroeconomics and Computer Science, University of Lausanne
President of the European Neural Network Society

[Title]
Chaotic attractors, complexity and beyond-Turing computational power in basal ganglia thalamo-cortical circuits

[Abstract]
The topology of neural networks, i.e. their structure and connectivity patterns, greatly affects their functionality. The evolution of both topologies and connection weights following rules derived from the study of neural development, differentiation, genetically programmed cell-death and synaptic plasticity rules has become increasingly investigated. The central hypothesis for brain attractors is that, once activated by appropriate activity, the network behaviour is maintained by a continuous reentry of activity. This involves strong correlations between neuronal activities in the network and a high incidence of repeating firing patterns therein, being generated by the underlying attractors. Recurring firing patterns without a specific association to a specific sensory or behavioral event may be viewed as 'spurious patterns' generated by 'spurious attractors'. On the contrary, spatiotemporal firing patterns in behaving animals, from rats to primates, where preferred firing sequences can be associated to specific types of stimuli or behaviours can be viewed as 'meaningful patterns' associated with 'meaningful attractors'. The application of this approach to a Boolean model of the basal ganglia-thalamocortical network shows that an automata-theoretical approach might bear new founding elements for the understanding of the complexity of real brain circuits.
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Host: Yoshiyuki Asai and Hiroaki Kitano, Open Biology Unit

We look forward to seeing many of you at the seminar.