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SUMMARY:BMI Seminar // Marcel Oberlaender - Deciphering the cortical outpu
 t code – A multiscale approach to predictive brain modelling
DTSTART:20261005T093000
DTEND:20261005T103000
DTSTAMP:20260917T133948Z
UID:d8c5a3b9eb7862371a6ffe4a6dc7f4edd18541f6d1a62a7817b54071
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Marcel Oberlaender\, Dept. of Integrative Neurophysiology\, V
 rije Universiteit Amsterdam\, Netherlands\nTo orchestrate complex behavior
 s in mammals\, the cerebral cortex must continuously transmit its processi
 ng results to subcortical regions. While internal cortical processing reli
 es on highly selective sparse codes\, these descending cortical output str
 eams employ an enigmatic dense code\, characterized by high firing rates a
 nd low feature selectivity. This dense population code presents a profound
  paradox: how can downstream regions extract precise\, cognitively relevan
 t signals when most cortical output neurons can be active at any moment? W
 e address this paradox by testing the hypothesis that cortex does not lose
  information when switching to a dense code. Instead\, it utilizes a mecha
 nism for sparse-to-dense coding transformations discovered by my laborator
 y: thalamocortical synapses target specifically the dendritic initiation z
 one for calcium action potentials (APs)\, which enables cortical output ne
 urons to transmit multiple information streams simultaneously via a multip
 lexed 1-2-3 AP syntax. I will provide first evidence that this remarkable 
 synaptic specificity and coding syntax generalize across long-range pathwa
 ys. Information coupling via an anatomically and biophysically distinct de
 ndritic nexus may hence be a ubiquitous mechanism for sparse-to-dense codi
 ng transformations in cortex. Dissecting these mechanistic origins of cort
 ical output streams is only now possible due to a unique in vivo – in si
 lico approach\, perfected over two decades\, that my laboratory developed 
 for bridging the gaps between dendritic and population-level computations
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717 https://epfl.zoom.u
 s/j/64813563657
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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