Human brain

Invasive surgical procedures in humans offer the unique opportunity to intracranially record and stimulate neuronal activity within precisely localized brain structures, enabling high-impact human neuroscience investigations. This NOFO seeks exploratory research projects, from newly formed or established multi-disciplinary teams, to understand how dynamic activity of single cells and ensembles of neurons in spatially organized networks gives rise to the internal states we experience as sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and memories, and to observable motor and social behaviors. The

…and functional organization of the human brain through neuroimaging, research presentations and educational forums. Content submissions open on 2 November and close on 14 December 2026. The call covers poster abstracts, symposia, educational courses, roundtables and society-group activities. Acceptance decisions are expected no later than February 2027. Registration is scheduled to ope

The human brain, composed of billions of neurons and synaptic connections, is an intricate network coordinating a sophisticated balance of excitatory and inhibitory activity between brain regions. The dynamical balance between excitation and inhibition is vital for adjusting neural input/output relationships in cortical networks and regulating the dynamic range of their responses to stimuli. To infer this balance using connectomics, we recently introduced a computational framework based on the Ising model, first developed to explain phase transitions in ferromagnets, and proposed a novel hybri

…yet poorly studied components of the human brain. In this work, we present a comparative lipidomic map of the human brain affected by schizophrenia or major depressive disorder. The study involved three groups of donors, 7 donors each, which included schizophrenic and depressive donors as well as healthy controls. The lipid composition of 36 brain regions was evaluated by liquid chroma

The human brain is an extremely complex network of ~80 billion neurons, and it underpins all thoughts and emotions through coordinated neural activity. The underlying network changes with age and environment, and it is vulnerable to perturbations. Our goal is to understand both normal and pathological neural networks at the level of individual neurons, and how human illnesses affect them.Studying human neurodevelopmental disorders is often challenging using animal models. By using cerebral organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), we can investigate these conditions in sophisticated

Synaptic mechanisms of memory consolidation in the human brain remain largely unexplored. During slow wave sleep, which is critical for memory formation, neocortical neurons exhibit characteristic membrane potential oscillations known as UP and DOWN states. We demonstrate that sleep-like UP and DOWN states modulate axonal action potentials and enhance synaptic transmission between human layer 2 & 3 pyramidal neurons. In the cortical microcircuit, synaptic enhancement by synchronous UP and DOWN states gives rise to efficient recruitment of action potentials in postsynaptic neurons, which in tur

To understand the human brain and its neurodegenerative diseases, as well as to develop appropriate treatments, we need to investigate human tissue. Human organotypic culture provides an excellent opportunity to examine cellular and network-level activities, as well as molecular changes at long-term, as this technique enables the maintenance of the brain tissue for several weeks with a preserved tissue structure and cellular connections. However, due to the slice preparation and culture technique, considerable changes occur in the cultured tissue. In this study, we explored neuronal degenerati

The human brain comprises about 86 billion neurons organized in well-defined spatial locations that define clusters of neurons (modules). Each cognitive and motor function is possible thanks to the correct interaction among them. The disruption, loss, or alteration of these connections can produce pathological conditions. To understand how the information is transmitted and computed, we need to investigate the communication among the different modules. Another essential feature to understand is how the electrophysiological signals are transmitted is the 3D spatial organization. Many studies ma

By the time a baby is born, its brain is equipped with tens of billions of intricately crafted neurons wired together to form a compact and breathtakingly efficient supercomputer. The book is meant to give a broad audience (i.e. non-neuroscientists) a sense of the step-by-step construction of a human brain as well as our current conceptual understanding of various processes involved. The book also hopes to highlight relevance of brain development to our growing understanding of cognitive and psychological variations and syndromes. The author will talk about the book including the many challeng

One may think that Deep Learning technology works in ways that are similar to the human brain. This is not really true. Our best AI technology still does not mimic the brain sufficiently well to be a match in intelligence. I will describe seven differences on how our minds work in ways diametrically opposite to those of Deep Learning technology.

In recent years, artificial neural networks have demonstrated human-like or super-human performance in many tasks including image or speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), playing Go, chess, poker and video-games. One remarkable feature of the resulting models is that they can develop very intuitive latent representations of their inputs. In these latent spaces, simple linear operations tend to give meaningful results, as in the well-known analogy QUEEN-WOMAN+MAN=KING. We postulate that human brain representations share essential properties with these deep learning latent space

Many regions of the human brain conduct highly specific functions, such as recognizing faces, understanding language, and thinking about other people’s thoughts. Why might this domain specific organization be a good design strategy for brains, and what is the origin of domain specificity in the first place? In this talk, I will present recent work testing whether the segregation of face and object perception in human brains emerges naturally from an optimization for both tasks. We trained artificial neural networks on face and object recognition, and found that networks were able to perform bo

The human brain, in particular the cerebral cortex, has undergone rapid expansion and increased complexity during recent evolution. One striking feature of human corticogenesis is that it is highly protracted in time, from prenatal stages of neurogenesis (taking months instead of days in the mouse), to postnatal stages of neuronal maturation and circuit formation (taking years instead of weeks in the mouse). This prolonged development is thought to contribute in an important fashion to increased cortical size, but also enhanced circuit complexity and plasticity. Here we will discuss how the sp

Kaja Nordengen joins Gaute Einevoll to discuss the human brain and the research used to understand its workings. Conversation in Norwegian.