Hamburg 2001 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 40: Statistische Physik in biologischen Systemen II

DY 40.1: Hauptvortrag

Donnerstag, 29. März 2001, 09:30–10:00, S 6

Cortical Dynamics and Neuronal Computation – Experiments and Models — •Ad Aertsen — Dept. Neurobiology and Biophysics, Inst. of Biology III, Albert-Ludwigs-University, Schänzlestrasse 1, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany.

The task of organizing perception and behavior in meaningful interaction with the external world prompts the brain to recruit its resources in a properly orchestrated manner. Our principal research goal is to understand how this organization is dynamically brought about, and how the brain uses such coordinated activity. Studies of cortical function on the basis of multiple single-neuron recordings revealed neuronal interactions which depend on stimulus- and behavioral context, exhibiting dynamics on different time scales, with time constants down to the millisecond range. Mechanisms underlying such dynamic organization of the cortical network are investigated by experimental and theoretical approaches. Recent work focuses on the occurrence of precise joint-spiking events in cortical activity. We tested the hypothesis that precise synchronization of action potentials among groups of neurons is an inherent mode of cortical network activity, in spite of the fluctuating background. We found evidence that volleys of precisely synchronized spikes can propagate through the cortical network in stable fashion with a temporal precision (∼1 ms), consistent with experimental observations. Our findings suggest that a combinatorial neural code, based on rapid associations of groups of neurons co-ordinating their activity at the single spike level, is biologically feasible.

Funded by DFG, GIF and HFSP.
Further information at http://www.brainworks.uni-freiburg.de