Computational modeling

…microscopy, mass spectrometry and computational modeling to investigate macromolecular complexes within intact biological systems. Sessions connect molecular machines with organelles, whole cells and multicellular interactions, emphasizing complementary data and methods that preserve native context. It welcomes experts and early-career life scientists interested in advanced imaging and system-wide analysis. On-site sessions start at 13:30 on 9 February and finish at 12:30 on 12 February, Europe/Berlin time. On-site registration clo

Science of Learning and Augmented Intelligence (SL) supports potentially transformative research that develops basic theoretical insights and fundamental knowledge about principles, processes and mechanisms of learning, and about augmented intelligence — how human cognitive function can be augmented through interactions with others or with technology, or through variations in context. The program supports research addressing learning in individuals and in groups, across a wide range of domains at one or more levels of analysis, including molecular and cellular mechanisms; brain systems; cognit

…and multiscale imaging, data science, computational modeling and deep learning. The programme connects molecular structure to tissue-level function and includes in-person, livestream and on-demand participation.

Reward expectations – one’s prediction about the likelihood of future outcomes - play a central role in shaping the satisfaction derived from those outcomes. Most existing research treats expectations as static, assuming they remain fixed in time. However, real-life expectations are often dynamic, fluctuating as new information becomes available. For example, during a soccer game, your expectations of seeing your team winning will likely rise and fall as the game unfolds. In the main part of this talk, I will present a series of studies demonstrating that human expectations can be tracked at s

A growing number of studies indicate the possible involvement of astrocytes in triggering or modulating neurovascular coupling (NVC), i.e. the local dilation of blood vessels in the brain in response to neuronal activity [1]. Their endfeet, surrounding arterioles and capillaries, are ideally positioned to deliver vasodilators to mural cells, either vascular smooth muscle cells or pericytes. Additionnaly, recent EM data suggest contact between endfeet and synapses [2], indicating direct interactions. At the interface between synapses and vessels, endfeet are perfect candidates to mediate NVC. R

…Here, using psychophysics, computational modeling, functional neuroimaging, and analysis of recorded speech, we ask if humans can detect pitch motion using computations analogous to those used by the visual system. We adapted visual stimuli to create novel auditory correlated noise stimuli that elicit robust pitch motion percepts. Crucially, these stimuli are inharmonic and pos

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 appropriate action for the current context. During Drosophila social interactions, males produce time-varying songs via wing vibration, while females arbitrate mating decisions. We discovered that male song structure and intensity are continually sculpted by the movements of the female, over timescales ranging from tens of milliseconds to minutes, and we have investigated the underlying circuit mechanism

Burst-suppression (BS) is a highly structured electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern characterized by alternating periods of high-voltage activity (bursts) and low or flatline activity (suppression). In non-anesthetized adults, BS indicates severe brain pathology, e.g. due to oxygen and glucose deprivation [1]. There are two types of BS: one with identical bursts that are highly periodic and uniform in shape, often signaling a poor prognosis, and one without identical bursts [2]. The neuronal mechanisms behind BS and these variations remain largely unknown. Some studies suggest the involvement of

The prefrontal cortex is a core limbic region crucial for emotional memory formation and adaptive decision-making. Accumulating evidence across species highlights the distinct roles of prefrontal subregions in various behaviors and memory processes. Despite this understanding, little is known about how distinct features of associative memories are encoded in neuronal ensembles within and across distinct prefrontal subregions and the role of these representations in the encoding and retrieval of emotional memories. In this study, we aim to elucidate the interplay between prefrontal subregions a

Pain expectations are formed by learning the association between specific circumstances and the occurrence of pain. These expectations are known to influence pain perception. Whether this learning is statistically optimal remains debated. If it is, the learning process of the participant should reflect their perception of the precision of each observation (stochasticity) and of the instability of the environment (volatility).Further, it is unclear whether inter-individual differences observed in experimental pain learning studies are due to temporary states or intrinsic traits.To probe these q

…Through computational modeling, we demonstrate that the brain uses a probabilistic predictive coding scheme to update beliefs about temperature changes based on their uncertainty. We find that these expectations directly modulate the perception of pain in the thermal grill illusion as well as the constituent innocuous cold and warm

Human decision-making biases are pervasive, influencing areas such as finance, law and medicine. Reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems has been offered as a solution to reduce such systematic errors. However, in judgments ranging from perception to emotion, AI systems can also exhibit biases themselves. For example, a hiring algorithm used by Amazon was inevitably trained to favor men over women and an algorithm used in US hospitals to estimate the need for additional medical care favored white patients over black patients. While the danger of biased algorithms automating and perpe

How seizures emerge from the abnormal dynamics of neural networks within the epileptogenic tissue remains an enigma. Are seizures random events, or do detectable changes in brain dynamics precede them? Are mechanisms of seizure emergence identical at the onset and later stages of epilepsy? Is the risk of seizure occurrence stable, or does it change over time? A myriad of questions about seizure genesis remains to be answered to understand the core principles governing seizure genesis. The last decade has brought unprecedented insights into the complex nature of seizure emergence. It is now bel

…of experimental investigation and computational modeling. I argue that it is time for our field to take the next step: build system models that capture a range of visual intelligence behaviors along with the underlying neural mechanisms. To make progress on system models, we propose integrative benchmarking – integrating experimental results from many la

…Computational modeling results suggested that this effect is mainly explained by a value updating mechanism whereby individuals integrate the outc

Due to the aging population and life digitalization, humanoid robots could be seen as potential community resources to accompany the elderly, support remote work, and improve individuals' mental or physical health. To enhance human-robot interaction, it is essential for robots to become more socialized via processing multiple social cues in a complex real-world environment. Thus, social cues integration and crossmodal conflict resolution are crucial for humanoid robots to implement social interaction. I will present a series of studies to explore the following questions: 1) how human participa

To generate brain circuits that are both flexible and stable requires the coordination of powerful developmental mechanisms acting at different scales, including activity-dependent synaptic plasticity and changes in single neuron properties. The brain prepares to efficiently compute information and reliably generate behavior during early development without any prior sensory experience but through patterned spontaneous activity. After the onset of sensory experience, ongoing activity continues to modify sensory circuits, and plays an important functional role in the mature brain. Using quantit

…Our methods include electrophysiology, computational modeling, and circuit tracing using a variety of imaging techniques.

Modeling neural responses to naturalistic stimuli has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of the visual system. Dominant computational modeling efforts in this direction have been deeply rooted in preconceived hypotheses. In contrast, hypothesis-neutral computational methodologies with minimal apriorism which bring neuroscience data directly to bear on the model development process are likely to be much more flexible and effective in modeling and understanding tuning properties throughout the visual system. In this study, we develop a hypothesis-neutral approach and characterize r

…This adaptation process is shown via modeling and experiment to encode in a spatially invariant manner the time intervals between event encounters, e.g. with landmarks as the animal learns the location of food. These cells also come in two varieties, ones that care only about the time since the

…various stimulus categories) and computational approaches which aimed to characterise the brain representations behind real-world proficiency of “super-recognizers”—individuals at the top of face recognition ability spectrum. U

…will first talk about how we integrate computational modeling with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural representation of social value and the modulation by ox

…how a combination of experimental and computational methods can be used to examine how neuron and network function depends on the und

…molecular sensors, and computational modeling. I will present recent wor