Date: Friday, October 3, 2014 Location: Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138 Speaker: Nima Dehghani, Wyss Institute Time: Informal lunch with speaker, 12:30pm. Talk, 1:00pm Title: Computational network dynamics of the neocortex gCal<https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=http://www.seas.harvard.… <https://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=http://www.seas.harvard.edu/calendar/event/77951/feed.icshttp://> iCal<http://webcal://www.seas.harvard.edu/calendar/event/77956/feed.ics&… Abstract: Network activity is a key aspect of neocortical computation. Whether the system portrays spatiotemporal assemblies, acts in a balanced regime, or if it follows a self-organized critical regime, are all among the fundamental organizing principles of neocortical computation. This talk will overview our recent findings from high-density ensemble recordings from the neocortex of humans and higher mammals such as monkey and cat. I will portray a detailed morpho-functional characterization of neuronal activity, functional connectivity at the microcircuit level, and the interplay of excitation and inhibition in the human neocortex. The discussion will extend to the examination of self-organized criticality in neural avalanche dynamics in different in vivo preparations during wakefulness, slow-wave sleep, and REM sleep, from cat to monkey and man. I will then show that the large ensemble of units show a remarkable excitatory and inhibitory balance, at multiple temporal scales, and for all brain states, except seizures, showing that balanced excitation-inhibition is a fundamental feature of normal brain activity. Speaker bio: Nima Dehghani received a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from France, and an M.D. from Iran. After his medical training, as a research fellow at the Harvard/MIT Martinos center and then at the UCSD Multimodal Imaging Lab & MGH Cortical Neurophysiology Lab, he worked on multimodal investigation and electromagnetic source localization of sleep rhythms and thalamocortical oscillations. His work at Unite de Neurosciences, Information et Complexite (UNIC) of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), was on spectral dynamics of MEG/EEG, assessment of self-organized criticality in invasive ensemble recordings, and analyzing network properties of excitation/inhibition in micro-circuitry of the cerebral cortex. At the Wyss, Nima is planning to use multimodal techniques in conjunction with the theoretical implications of bioelectromagnetism, multiscale interaction, and complex systems to characterize the dynamic patterns of neuro-signals obtained from miniaturized high-throughput microdevices and large-scale recordings. He aims to predict the behavior of such signals with higher accuracy and further enhance their usability for clinical purposes. *********************** UPCOMING SEMINARS 10/10 D.E. Shaw Research 10/17 Ashish Mahabal (Caltech) 10/31 Chris Miller (Brandeis & HHMI) 11/14 Bill Henshaw (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) 11/21 Brian Hayes (IACS Associate) Visit http://iacs.seas.harvard.edu/events to subscribe to our Google calendar, manage your subscription to this mailing list, or access video and audio recordings of previous seminars. _______________________________________________ Iacs-events mailing list Iacs-events(a)seas.harvard.edu https://lists.seas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/iacs-events