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Accelerating bio-plausible spiking simulations on the Graphcore IPU
Since the popularization of GPUs for machine learning (ML) workloads, several dedicated accelerator chips have emerged, offering architectures optimized for common ML operations and requirements. The
Adversarial-inspired autoencoder framework for salient sensory feature extraction
The natural world is full of noise, but the brain’s capacity for information transmission is severely limited. Therefore, discarding irrelevant information contained in sensory inputs while retaining
Adolescent maturation of cortical excitation-inhibition balance based on individualized biophysical network modeling
Background: The balance of excitation and inhibition (E-I) is a key functional property of cortical microcircuits [1] which changes through lifespan. Adolescence is considered a crucial period for the
Analysis of burst sequences in mouse prefrontal cortex during learning
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in working memory [1], however, the underlying neural processes remains elusive. Studies on the hippocampus revealed that place cell sequences encod
A connectome manipulation framework for the systematic and reproducible study of structure-function relationships through simulations
Even with complete knowledge of the underlying wiring diagram using electron microscopy and the neuronal activity through $in~vivo$ recordings, we can only ever correlate neuron function with particip
Anatomically-aligned neural processing of the IBL task
Understanding how tasks are processed across the entire brain is a central yet complex question in neuroscience. Recently, the release of brainwide electrophysiological recordings in a standardized be
Assessing Neural Manifold Properties With Adapted Normalizing Flows
Despite the large number of active neurons in the cortex, the activity of neuronal populations is expected to lie on a low-dimensional manifold for different brain regions [1]. Variants of principal c
An Attention-based Multimodal Decoder for Hybrid Brain-Computer Interface Control Systems
Robotic-assisted rehabilitation therapies play a crucial role in improving motor recovery by providing precise, repeatable, and intensive therapeutic interventions that traditional methods often lack
Adaptive probabilistic regression for real-time motor excitability state prediction from human EEG
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a promising tool for neuromodulatory interventions in research and clinical settings, yet its effects are highly variable. Real-time EEG-TMS seeks to mitigat
Bayesian inference and arousal modulation in spatial perception to mitigate stochasticity and volatility
Perceivers benefit from integrating their prior beliefs with sensory signals based on their relative reliability to mitigate the effects of stochastic noise. However, in volatile environments, one sho
How Do Bees See the World? A (Normative) Deep Reinforcement Learning Model for Insect Navigation
Central place foraging insects like the honeybee (Apis mellifera) are the masters of visual navigation of the insect world: They are able to reliably return to their nest under a wide range of visual
cuBNM: GPU-Accelerated Biophysical Network Modeling
Background: Biophysical network modeling (BNM) of the brain is a promising technique for bridging macro- and microscale levels of investigation, enabling inferences about latent features of brain acti
Effective excitability: a determinant of the network bursting dynamics revealed by parameter invariance
Neuronal cultures in vitro are a versatile system for studying the basic properties of individual neurons and neuronal networks that recently gained additional attention as a precision medicine tool.
Behavioral and Neuronal Correlates of Exploration and Goal-Directed Navigation
Rodents and primates exhibit trade-offs between exploitation and exploration. Understanding how different behavioral states modulate neural activities remains a critical question. Previous research ha
Beyond Cognitive Maps: Gradually Eliminating Spatial Influence in Learned Graph Representations
Cognitive maps have been proposed as an essential relational structure for human memory and thought (Tolman, 1948; Constantinescu et al., 2016). In this format, remembered entities are embedded in spa
Bimodal multistability during perceptual detection in the ventral premotor cortex
How does the brain process and integrate information from different sensory modalities? This intriguing question has been explored in this study by recording the activity of the Ventral Premotor Corte
Biological evidence that the cortex does not implement backpropagation
The mammalian neocortex possesses the remarkable ability to translate complex sensory inputs into abstract representations through the coordinated activity of large neuronal ensembles across the senso
Intrinsic dimension of neural activity: comparing artificial and biological neural networks
Artificial recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have become a customary research tool in theoretical neuroscience, being used as models of biological neural networks performing cognitive tasks. While RNNs
A biological model of nonlinear dimensionality reduction
Animals make decisions based on high-dimensional sensory inputs. Obtaining their low-dimensional disentangled representations, ideally in an unsupervised manner, is essential for straightforward downs
Biological-plausible learning with a two compartment neuron model in recurrent neural networks
Artificial recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are difficult to train due to their tendency towards instability, and common training algorithms that tame such networks are not biologically plausible, i.e
Bistability at the cellular level promotes robust and tunable criticality at the circuit level
For more than 20 years, a growing body of evidence indicates that the brain functions near a critical point, where neural activity is balanced between damping and amplification. One of the appealing b
A bottom-up approach to Activity Dependent and Activity Independent Synaptic Turnover
Activity dependent synaptic plasticity is widely believed to play the major role in learning and memory. Moreover, the robustness of formed memories is dependent on the stability of synapses. However,
Brain-wide manifold-organized hierarchical encoding of behaviors in C. elegans
A fundamental problem in neuroscience is how neuronal activity in the brain generates organized and stable behaviors across multiple timescales. Recent research in many model organisms, e.g. in monkey
Bootstrapping the auditory space map via an innate circuit
The ability to accurately localize sound sources is crucial for human and other animals. An important question is: how could the brain calibrate its space map in response to changes to acoustic cu
Building mechanistic models of neural computations with simulation-based machine learning
Experimental techniques now make it possible to measure the structure and function of neural circuits at an unprecedented scale and resolution. How can we leverage this wealth of data to understand ho
Building internal models during periods of rest and sleep
Every day we make decisions critical for adaptation and survival. We repeat actions with known consequences. But we can also infer associations between loosely related events to infer and imagine the
Bridging biophysics and computation with differentiable simulation
Biophysical neuron models provide mechanistic insight about empirically observed phenomena. However, biophysical neuron models are expensive to simulate, thereby limiting the scale of biophysical mode
Investigating hippocampal synaptic plasticity in Schizophrenia: a computational and experimental approach using MEA recordings
Among the brain structures affected in Schizophrenia is the hippocampus. In addition to structural changes [1], dysfunctions of the synaptic plasticity have also been observed supporting cognitive imp
Causal role of human frontopolar cortex in information integration during complex decision making
Integrating information is particularly crucial when decisions contain complex information. In decision neuroscience, it has been widely studied how overall decision value is encoded in the brain, but
Cellular action potential generation: a key player in setting the network state
To understand network computation, we usually focus on the connectivity among neurons. In this talk, however, I demonstrate how the biophysics of action-potential generation can have a decisive impact
A census of neural timescales across the mouse brain
Ongoing neural activity fluctuates over a broad range of timescales. Variations in intrinsic timescales across the forebrain relate to the functional specialization of cortical areas along the visual
Chronic optogenetic stimulation has the potential to shape the collective activity of neuronal cell cultures
Neuronal cultures and human stem-cell-derived organoids are fundamental building blocks of neuroscientific research and future personalized medicine. However, in-vitro networks show considerably more
Co-Design of Analog Neuromorphic Systems and Cortical Motifs with Local Dendritic Learning Rules
Analog neuromorphic circuits emulate the dynamic properties of biological neural systems through their physics [1], sharing similarities and constraints with them [2,3]. This alignment can be leverage
Knocking out co-active plasticity rules in neural networks reveals synapse type-specific contributions for learning and memory
Synaptic plasticity is thought to underlie learning and memory [1]. Plasticity rules can be active in different synaptic connection types, such as excitatory-excitatory (EE) and inhibitory-excitatory
Structure-function relationships and extended critical region in modular spiking model
Healthy brains exhibit a rich dynamical repertoire with flexible and varied spatiotemporal patterns replays on both microscopic and large scales. Neurodegenerative diseases reduce this functional repe
Co-development of accommodation and vergence and quantification of their interaction
The relationship between vergence and accommodation remains relatively unexplored. The frequent co-occurrence of non-strabismic accommodation and vergence disorders suggests a link between the two pro
Circuit Mechanisms for Dynamic Social Interactions
Our research explores the neural mechanisms underlying flexibility during natural social interactions - how animals process dynamic sensory cues from a partner, make decisions, and pattern the appropr
Calcium imaging-based brain-computer interface in freely behaving mice
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are a powerful tool in both clinical applications and basic science research. Traditionally, BCIs rely on electrical signals collected by electrode arrays, which usual
Code reversal between stimulus processing and fading memories in primate V1
The involvement of early visual cortex during the short-term maintenance of visual information has been demonstrated in human fMRI studies [1,2]. However, evidence for sustained, stimulus-related neur
Co-evolved structural and temporal network heterogeneity
Contrary to typical artificial neural network (ANN) design, biological neurons are not identical. Neurons differ substantially in their physiological properties. Heterogeneity has been hypothesized to
Competition and integration of sensory signals in a deep reinforcement learning agent
Animals often make use of information from multiple sensory systems, such as vision, proprioception, olfaction, and audition to guide their behavior. They must thus integrate these different sensory i
Complex spatial representations and computations emerge in a memory-augmented network that learns to navigate
There has been a long-lasting debate on whether the function of the hippocampal formation is to store and retrieve episodic memory, supported by experiments in humans, or to code for space, suggested
Computational analysis of optogenetic inhibition of a pyramidal CA1 neuron
Optogenetic inhibition of excitatory subpopulations of the hippocampus has been suggested as a new approach in the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), one of the most common types of drug-resis
Computational mechanisms of odor perception and representational drift in rodent olfactory systems
Olfaction facilitates a large variety of animal behaviors such as feeding, mating, and communication. In the mammal olfactory system, the olfactory bulb (OB) and piriform cortex (PCx) are responsible
Computational implications of motor primitives for cortical motor learning
Motor control is a complex, high-dimensional task. It has been suggested that the brain may reduce the dimensionality of this control problem by using a set of motor primitives (or muscle synergies) t
A computationally efficient simplification of the Brunel-Wang NMDA model: Numerical approach and first results
A model for NMDA-receptor-mediated synaptic currents generating persistent activity proposed by Wang and Brunel [1–3] has been widely adopted in computational neuroscience, both for spiking-neuron and
Computing mutual-information rates by maximum-entropy-inspired models
Information in sensory neurons is conveyed by spiking activity varying in time. This is quantified by the mutual-information rate (MIR), given by $\mathrm{MIR}:=\underset{\Delta t\rightarrow\infty}{\l
Controversial Opinions on Model Based and Model Free Reinforcement Learning in the Brain
Dopaminergic Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs) are a key motivation and inspiration for model free, temporal difference reinforcement learning methods. Originally, the correlation of RPEs with model fre
Computational modelling of dentate granule cells reveals Pareto optimal trade-off between pattern separation and energy efficiency (economy)
Hippocampal granule cell (GC) models exhibit degeneracy with different ion channel parameters resulting in comparable functional behaviour [1,2]. However, it is unknown how the degenerate models are f
Adaptive brain-computer interfaces based on error-related potentials and reinforcement learning
Error-related potentials (ErrPs) represent the neural signature of error processing in the brain and numerous studies have demonstrated their reliable detection using non-invasive techniques such as e