Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 2: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems I (joint session of BP + DY)

DY 2.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 22, 2010, 10:15–10:45, H45

Noise during rest enables the exploration of the brain's dynamic repertoire — •Viktor Jirsa — Theoretical Neuroscience Group CNRS, ISM UMR6233, Marseille Luminy, France

At rest certain cortical regions of the human brain consistently show temporally coherent activity. In humans, these resting state networks have been shown to greatly overlap with functional architectures present during consciously directed activity, which motivates the interpretation of rest activity as day dreaming, free association, stream of consciousness, and inner rehearsal. Here, we show that comparable resting state networks emerge from a stability analysis of the network dynamics using biologically realistic primate brain connectivity, although anatomical information alone does not identify the network. We specifically demonstrate that noise and time delays via propagation along connecting fibres are essential for the emergence of the coherent fluctuations at rest. The combination of anatomical structure and time delays creates a space-time structure of the couplings in which the neural noise enables the brain to explore various functional configurations representing its dynamic repertoire.