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PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
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SUMMARY:LCN Seminar
DTSTART:20120927T133000
DTSTAMP:20260407T002420Z
UID:f1bbe4c862b77dc94e9a822be1ce9e8c7387a01deae8c141064285f5
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Fred WOLF (homepage)\n\nHead of the Research Group ‘Th
 eoretical Neurophysics’\, Department of Nonlinear Dynamics\, Max Planck 
 Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization\, Göttingen\nAbstract:\nOver
  the past 65 million years\, the evolution of mammals led - in several lin
 eages - to a dramatic increase in brain size. During this process\, some n
 eocortical areas\, including the primary sensory ones\, expanded by many o
 rders of magnitude. The primary visual cortex\, for instance\, measured ab
 out a square millimeter in late cretaceous stem eutherians but in homo sap
 iens comprises more than 2000 mm2. If we could rewind time and restart the
  evolution of large and large brained mammals\, would the network architec
 ture of neocortical circuits take the same shape or would the random tinke
 ring process of biological evolution generate different or even fundamenta
 lly distinct designs? In this talk\, I will argue that\, based on the cons
 olidated mammalian phylogenies available now\, this seemingly speculative 
 question can be rigorously approached using a combination of quantitative 
 brain imaging\, computational\, and dynamical systems techniques. Our stud
 ies on visual cortical circuit layout in a broad range of eutherian specie
 s indicate that neuronal plasticity and developmental network self-organiz
 ation have restricted the evolution of neuronal circuitry underlying orien
 tation columns to a few discrete design alternatives. Our theoretical anal
 yzes predict that different evolutionary lineages adopt virtually identica
 l circuit designs when using only qualitatively similar mechanisms of deve
 lopmental plasticity.
LOCATION:SG 0213 http://plan.epfl.ch/?room=sg0213
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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