Topic: brain networks

Corey Keller discusses how transcranial magnetic stimulation can probe and influence brain networks. He explains efforts to measure the brain's response to stimulation and to understand why treatment outcomes differ, outlining the opportunities and remaining uncertainties in developing more precise psychiatric interventions.

The epileptogenesis process is associated with large-scale changes in gene expression, which contribute to the remodelling of brain networks permanently altering excitability. About 80% of the protein coding genes are under the influence of the circadian rhythms. These are 24-hour endogenous rhythms that determine a large number of daily changes in physiology and behavior in our bodies. In the brain, the master clock regulates a large number of pathways that are important during epileptogenesis and established-epilepsy, such as neurotransmission, synaptic homeostasis, inflammation, blood-brain

Brain networks exist within the confines of resource limitations. As a result, a brain network must overcome metabolic costs of growing and sustaining the network within its physical space, while simultaneously implementing its required information processing. To observe the effect of these processes, we introduce the spatially-embedded recurrent neural network (seRNN). seRNNs learn basic task-related inferences while existing within a 3D Euclidean space, where the communication of constituent neurons is constrained by a sparse connectome. We find that seRNNs, similar to primate cerebral corti

The development of circuit-based therapeutics to treat neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases require detailed localization and understanding of electrophysiological signals in the human brain. Electrodes can record and stimulate circuits in many ways, and we often rely on non-invasive imaging methods to predict the location to implant electrodes. However, electrophysiological and imaging signals measure the underlying tissue in a fundamentally different manner. To integrate multimodal data and benefit from these complementary measurements, I will describe an approach that considers how di

The understanding of the stroke lesions’ consequences is limited, and it relies mostly on behavioral reports and mere descriptive correlational information from neuroimaging techniques. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, it has been shown that the functional synchronization between distinct regions of the brain, referred to as functional connectivity, is disrupted by stroke. Nevertheless, this kind of data is usually large and high-dimensional. Extracting useful information from the vast amount of information afforded by brain networks remains a great challenge so, in order to make s

Executive control processes and flexible behaviors rely on the integrity of, and dynamic interactions between, large-scale functional brain networks. The right insular cortex is a critical component of a salience/midcingulo-insular network that is thought to mediate interactions between brain networks involved in externally oriented (central executive/lateral frontoparietal network) and internally oriented (default mode/medial frontoparietal network) processes. How these brain systems reconfigure with development is a critical question for cognitive neuroscience, with implications for neurodev

The seminar will first outline the architecture of the human mind, specifying general and domain-specific mental processes. The place of causal reasoning and its relations with the other processes will be specified. Experimental, psychometric, developmental, and brain-based evidence will be summarized. The main message of the talk is that causal thought involves domain-specific core processes rooted in perception and served by special brain networks which capture interactions between objects. With development, causal reasoning is increasingly associated with a general abstraction system which

The human brain is a complex network of neuronal connections. The precise arrangement of these connections, otherwise known as the topology of the network, is crucial to its functioning. Recent efforts to understand how the complex topology of the brain has emerged have used generative mathematical models, which grow synthetic networks according to specific wiring rules. Evidence suggests that a wiring rule which emulates a trade-off between connection costs and functional benefits can produce networks that capture essential topological properties of brain networks. In this webinar, Professor

Cognitive control involves the flexible allocation of mental resources during goal-directed behaviour and comprises three correlated but distinct domains—inhibition, task shifting, and working memory. Healthy ageing is characterised by reduced cognitive control. Professor Cheryl Grady and her team have been studying the influence of age differences in large-scale brain networks on the three control processes in a sample of adults from 20 to 86 years of age. In this webinar, Professor Cheryl Grady will describe three aspects of this work: 1) age-related dedifferentiation and reconfiguration of

The ability to experience pain is old in evolutionary terms. It is an experience shared across species. Acute pain is the body’s alarm system, and as such it is a good thing. Pain that persists beyond normal tissue healing time (3-4 months) is defined as chronic – it is the system gone wrong and it is not a good thing. Chronic pain has recently been classified as both a symptom and disease in its own right. It is one of the largest medical health problems worldwide with one in five adults diagnosed with the condition. The brain is key to the experience of pain and pain relief. This is the plac

The emergence of large-scale brain networks, and their continual refinement, represent crucial developmental processes that can drive individual differences in cognition and which are associated with multiple neurodevelopmental conditions. But how does this organization arise, and what mechanisms govern the diversity of these developmental processes? There are many existing descriptive theories, but to date none are computationally formalized. We provide a mathematical framework that specifies the growth of a brain network over developmental time. Within this framework macroscopic brain organi

Historically, research on the brain has been working its way in from the outside world, hoping that such systematic exploration will take us some day to the middle and on through the middle to the output. Ever since the time of Aristotle, philosophers and scientists have assumed that the brain (or, more precisely, the mind) is initially a blank slate filled up gradually with experience in an outside-in manner. An alternative, brain-centric view, the one I am promoting, is that self-organized brain networks induce a vast repertoire of preformed neuronal patterns. While interacting with the worl

Scientific progress increasingly relies on interdisciplinary collaborations as experimental and simulation datasets grow in complexity. However, these datasets are often underutilized due to inadequate solutions for data management, sharing, and analysis. Existing solutions address different aspects of the data workflow, but an integrated approach is still missing. We address these challenges within the EU-funded In2PrimateBrains [1] project, which investigates brain networks in non-human primates, using modular open-source tools, methods, and services to balance standardization and adaptabili