Welcome to the Virtual Presentations area!
We will upload here short and long talks presented at the BrainCrit 2022 conference, as soon as they become ready for publishing. For virtual posters check here.
Day #1 | Day #2 | Day #3 – Wednesday Nov 9th 2022
INVITED TALKS
Talk 2022#Day3-1 – Changsong ZHOU – Cost-Efficient Neural Dynamics from Sparse Irregular Spikes to Avalanches: Reconciling Multilevel Spontaneous and Evoked Activity in E-I Balanced Neural Networks at Criticality
By Changsong Zhou (Hong Kong, PRC). The brain is highly energy consuming, therefore is under strong selective pressure to achieve cost- efficiency in both cortical connectivity and activity. Cortical neural circuits display highly irregular spiking in individual neurons but variably sized collective firing, oscillations and critical avalanches at the population level, all of which have…
Talk 2022#Day3-2 – Lucilla DE ARCANGELIS – Alpha Rhythm as a Pacemaker for Network Excitability
By Lucilla De Arcangelis (Caserta, Italy). Recent evidence suggests that the alpha rhythm plays an active role in information processing, modulating behavioral and cognitive performance. However, the functional link between alpha activity and architecture of neuronal dynamics remains poorly understood. To address this question, here we study collective neural activity during resting wake and NREM…
Talk 2022#Day3-3 – Mauro COPELLI – Criticality and Cortical States
By Mauro Copelli (Recife, Brazil). The idea that the brain operates near a second-order phase transition has gained traction in the last two decades. Since the first experimental observation of neuronal avalanches in vitro, a putative connection has been established between brain dynamics and a critical branching process or, more generally, any process belonging to…
Talk 2022#Day3-4 – Arvind KUMAR – Role of Input Correlations in Shaping the Trial-By-Trial Variability in a Model of Neocortex
By Arvind Kumar (Stockholm, Sweden). Across-trial variability is an ubiquitous feature of cortical activity. Across-trial variability is not fixed and depends on the stimulus and attentional shifts. Recently it has also become apparent that across-trial variability not only affects the stimulus response but also affects behavioral performance. In my talk I will discuss mechanisms that…
Talk 2022#Day3-5 – Anna LEVINA – Maintenance and Selection of Neuronal States Powered by the Self-Organization
By Anna Levina (Tübingen, Germany). It is widely believed that some neuronal states are better suited for computations than others. For example, closeness to the critical state at the second-order phase transition was shown to be particularly suitable for computations in artificial systems. Alternatively, the balance of excitation and inhibition was also associated, i.e., with…
Talk 2022#Day3-6 – Michelle GIRVAN – Brain-Inspired Machine Learning and the Advantages of Robust Critical-Like Dynamics
By Michelle Girvan (College Park, MD). Empirical evidence suggests that biological and technological networks may have evolved to operate near the tipping point between quiescence and large-scale perturbation amplification in order to maximize functionality. However, proximity to criticality as an explanation for observed power law distributions in a wide range of systems remains controversial, with…
Talk 2022#Day3-7 – Mac SHINE – Computational Models Link Cellular Mechanisms of Neuromodulation to Large-Scale Neural Dynamics
By Mac Shine (Sydney, Australia). Decades of neurobiological research have disclosed the diverse manners in which the response properties of neurons are dynamically modulated to support adaptive cognitive functions. This neuromodulation is achieved through alterations in the biophysical properties of the neuron. However, changes in cognitive function do not arise directly from the modulation of…
Keynote 2022#Day3 – Henrik JENSEN – What Happens in the Vicinity of the Critical Point and How Do You Get There?
By Henrik Jensen (London, UK). We will briefly recall the description of behaviour near a critical equilibrium phase transition, i.e., when the correlation length diverges to infinity leading to universal behaviour captured by exponents determined by the symmetry and dimensionality of the system but otherwise fixed and constant in the vicinity of the critical region.…
Spotlight talks
Spotlight 2022#7 – Megan BOUCHER-ROUTHIER – Deep Generative Adversarial Networks Capturing Complex Spiral Waves in Disinhibited Cortical Circuits
By Megan Boucher-Routhier (University of Ottawa,ON). November 9th, 2022. In cortical circuits, disinhibited activity yields complex spatiotemporal patterns of fluctuation. One example of this occurs during interictal epileptic brain activity where spiral waves are generated, consisting of complex neural activity that rotates around a center of mass. Here, we investigated the complexity of neural activity…
Spotlight 2022#8 – Marie-Constance CORSI – Exploiting Brain Critical Dynamics to Inform Brain-Computer Interface Performance
By Marie-Constance Corsi (Paris Brain Institute, Paris, France). November 9th, 2022. The reconfiguration of large-scale interactions among multiple brain regions is characterized by aperiodic perturbations, called “Neuronal Avalanches”, which can be tracked non-invasively as they expand across the brain. As such, learning a new task might affect the path of propagation of neuronal avalanches.Brain-Computer Interfaces…
Spotlight 2022#9 – Asem WARDAK – Extended Anderson Criticality in Heavy-Tailed Neural Networks
By Asem Wardak (Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA). November 9th, 2022. We investigate the emergence of complex dynamics in networks with heavy-tailed connectivity by developing a non-Hermitian random matrix theory. We uncover the existence of an extended critical regime of spatially multifractal fluctuations between the quiescent and active phases. This multifractal critical phase combines features…