How the brain uses signals from the environment to organize perception and behavior is a fundamental question in neuroscience, past and present. While the second half of the 20th century was dedicated in large parts to understanding how external signals dictate neural activity, the past few decades have seen increased focus on the importance of internally generated activity in neural function.
This importance was showcased early on through spatial mapping in hippocampus and surrounding structures, in which generative patterns are particularly clearly expressed through neural activity.
Currently, there is a substantial ongoing effort to understand the principles of how the brain also organizes sensory-motor functions through internally generated activity.
Programme
12.00-12.30: Opening remarks: The generative brain: perspectives on internally generated neural activity
12.30-13.00: Discretizing perception: statistical learning in primary olfactory cortex (Hanne Stensola, University of Agder)
13.00-13.30: Population bursts in archicortices: from hippocampal ripples to piriform cortex network dynamics (Lisa Roux, Université de Bordeaux)
13.30-14.00: The role of neuronal inhibition in creating and maintaining memories (Koen Vervaeke, University of Oslo)
14.00-14.30: Break: Q&A + refuel
14.30-15.00: This decision, not just the average decision: Factors contributing to one single perceptual judgement (Mathew Diamond, SISSA)
15.00-15.30: Stimulus information guides the emergence of behaviour related signals in primary somatosensory cortex during learning (Michael Kohl, University of Glasgow)
15.30-16.00: Learnable neural dynamics: towards uncovering generative models in the brain (Mackenzie Mathis, EPFL)
16.00-16.30: Break: Q&A + refuel
16.30-17.00: How central processes influence sensorimotor processing and learning (Alexander Mathis, EPFL)
17.00-17.30: Development of grid cell circuits in the entorhinal cortex: Nature or nurture? (Edvard Moser, NTNU)
17.30-18.00: From grid cells to navigation: Theta-paced sweeps in the entorhinal-hippocampal spatial map (Edvard Moser, NTNU)
18.00-18.30: Break: Q&A + refuel
18.30-19.00: Fronting the future with prefrontal cortex (Alessandro Treves, SISSA)
19.00-19.30: Closing remarks: Continual learning in neuroscience (Tor Stensola, University of Agder)
Speakers
Lisa Roux, University of Bordeaux
Lisa Roux is a researcher at CNRS leading the team “Olfaction and Memory” at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience (IINS, CNRS UMR5297, Bordeaux University, France) since 2018. She did her PhD in the lab of Christian Giaume at the Collège de France where she worked on neuro-glial interactions in the olfactory system using primarily slice electrophysiology methods. Her work unraveled a bi-directional loop of interactions between neuron and astrocyte networks which could impact olfactory information processing.
In 2012, Lisa Roux joined the lab of Gyorgy Buzsáki at the New York University (USA) as a postdoctoral fellow. There, she used advanced in vivo electrophysiology and optogenetic approaches in freely moving mice to understand the mechanisms of hippocampal oscillations and their function in spatial memory processes. Notably, she studied the cellular mechanisms involved in two types of network oscillations, fundamental to memory function in the hippocampus: theta and sharp wave ripple oscillations. Her work also uncovered a key role played by sharp wave ripple oscillations in the maintenance of the hippocampal “cognitive map” during spatial learning. The role played by inhibitory interneurons in shaping circuit functions in the behaving animal was at the core of her work. As an independent group leader at the IINS, she broadened her field of investigation by studying the neuronal substrates of olfactory memory formation.
Koen Vervaeke, University of Oslo
Koen Vervaeke earned a degree in civil engineering with a focus on chemistry from Gent University in Belgium. He continued his studies with a PhD in computational neuroscience from the University of Oslo. Following postdoctoral positions at University College London with Angus Silver and at the Janelia Farm research campus with Karel Svoboda and Jeff Magee, he established his own lab in 2016 after securing an ERC starting grant. His lab investigates neural computations in understudied brain areas using optical methods. Currently, the lab’s primary focus is the mouse retrosplenial cortex, where we examine head direction and spatial coding mechanisms.
We are a multidisciplinary lab that combines experiments and computational modeling. Our central approach is to train mice to perform simple perceptual tasks. By using quantitative behavior, optogenetic gain- and loss-of-function manipulations, in-vivo two-photon imaging, and electrophysiology, we aim to provide a description of the relationship between the function of neural circuits and perception. To obtain a mechanistic understanding of how neural circuits operate we use our experimental data to develop computer models. This allows us not only to test hypotheses but also to help the design of new experiments.
Mathew Diamond, SISSA
Mathew Diamond is the group leader of the Sensory Perception and Memory lab at SISSA. The lab aims to build a better understanding of the neuronal language of perception – how brain activity gives rise to a subjective sensory experience and how that same activity guides behavioral decisions. Since decisions result from linking the ongoing experience to past experiences, perception and decision making intimately involve memory. The approach is to characterize lab-animal perceptual performance by rigorous psychophysical measures and then to identify systematic relationships between neuronal activity and behavior. Optogenetic control over neuronal activity provides additional insights. Interpretation of the data requires new computational methods both for local spike train analyses and for large scale relations among distributed brain centers.
Mathew was born and grew up in North Carolina, USA. After obtaining a BSc degree in Engineering Science from the University of Virginia, he pursued a PhD in Neurobiology at the University of North Carolina. He was then a postdoc at Brown University with Ford Ebner before taking a faculty position at Vanderbilt University. He left the US when the Cognitive Neuroscience program was opened at SISSA over 20 years ago. Beyond research, he participates in international courses and disseminates introductory neuroscience through the book From Neuron To Brain (Oxford University press, 6th edition, 2021).
Michael Kohl, University of Glasgow
Michael Kohl received a B.Sc in Neuroscience (2005) from University College London, and, as part of the Wellcome Trust Oxford Ion Channel Initiative, a D.Phil in Physiology (2009) from the University of Oxford. He carried out his postdoctoral studies at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University (2010-2011) and the University of California, Berkeley (2012-2013). He became an Early Career Research Fellow at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics in 2013 and University Research Lecturer in 2018. He took up a Senior Lectureship in Neuroscience in the Centre for Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow in 2018.
Research in Michael’s laboratory focuses on how neural activity in primary sensory cortices integrates with activity in a higher order cortex, such as the retrosplenial cortex. The lab combines theoretical studies to make quantitative predictions about population codes and their information content to help guide experiments. The lab also continues to develop novel experimental tools and analysis approaches.
Mackenzie Mathis, EPFL
Prof. Mackenzie W. Mathis is the Bertarelli Foundation Chair of Integrative Neuroscience and an Assistant Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). Following the award of her PhD at Harvard University in 2017 with Prof. Naoshige Uchida, she was awarded the prestigious Rowland Fellowship at Harvard to start her independent laboratory (2017-2020). Before starting her group, she worked with Prof. Matthias Bethge at the University of Tübingen in the summer of 2017 with the support of the Women & the Brain Project ALS Fellowship. She is an ELLIS Scholar, Vallee Scholar, a former NSF Graduate Fellow, and her work has been featured in the news at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nature, and The Atlantic. She was awarded the FENS EJN Young Investigator Prize 2022 & the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientist Prize in 2023.
Her lab works on mechanisms underlying adaptive behavior in intelligent systems. Specifically, the laboratory combines machine learning, computer vision, and experimental work in rodents with the combined goal of understanding the neural basis of adaptive motor control.
Alexander Mathis, EPFL
Alexander Mathis studied pure mathematics with a minor in logic and theory of science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. For his PhD also at LMU, he worked on optimal coding approaches to elucidate the properties of grid cells. As a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Venkatesh N. Murthy at Harvard University and Prof. Matthias Bethge at Tuebingen AI, he decided to study olfactory behaviors such as odor-guided navigation, social behaviors and the cocktail party problem in mice. During this time, he increasingly got interested in sensorimotor behaviors beyond olfaction and started working on proprioception, motor adaptation, as well as computer vision tools for measuring animal behavior.
In his group, he is interested in elucidating how the brain gives rise to adaptive behavior. We work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning. Ultimately, we are interested in reverse engineering the algorithms of the brain, in order to figure out how the brain works and to build better artificial intelligence systems.
We develop machine learning tools for behavioral (e.g. DeepLabCut) and neural data analysis and conversely try to learn from the brain to solve challenging machine learning problems such as learning motor skills.
Edvard Moser, NTNU
Edvard Moser is interested in neural network coding in the brain, with emphasis on space, time and memory. His work, conducted in collaboration with May-Britt Moser, includes the discovery of grid cells in the brain’s position system. Their current focus is on unravelling how space and time emerge from interactions between large numbers of neurons with known functional identity, an endeavour significantly boosted by the development of Neuropixels probes and 2-photon miniscopes for freely-moving rodents – technologies that the Mosers have participated in developing.
Edvard Moser received his initial training at the University of Oslo under the supervision of Per Andersen. He received postdoctoral training in the U.K. with Richard Morris and John O’Keefe. In 1996 he accepted a faculty position at NTNU, where he became a professor in 1998. With May-Britt Moser he founded the Centre for the Biology of Memory in 2002, the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience in 2007, the Centre for Neural Computation in 2013, and the Centre for Algorithms in the Cortex in 2023. The Mosers have received numerous awards, including the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
Alessandro Treves, SISSA
Alessandro Treves has studied at Yale and then physics in Florence, Rome and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he got his PhD with Daniel Amit in 1989, but also met Giordana and theoretical neuroscience. After a postdoc with Edmund Rolls in Oxford, he has been at SISSA since 1992, where he enjoys the collaboration of the non-hierarchical, self-organising limbo research group. Between 2003-2022 he was affiliated with the research centre of Edvard and May-Britt Moser at NTNU, and from 2024 with that of Hanne and Tor Stensola at UiA.
In 2011-2013 he served as Science Advisor to the Italian Embassy in Tel Aviv and upon returning to SISSA as Director of the Master in Complex Actions, an executive course aimed at stimulating hi-tech entrepreneurship.
In 2010 he convened the first, and so far last, Ararat Memory Meeting in Yerevan, Armenia. He has lectured and taught courses at IPM in Tehran, Al Quds University in East Jerusalem and Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, establishing there cross-disciplinary student exchange initiatives.
Contact:
- tor.stensola@uia.no
- Phone
- +47 38 14 10 27
- hanne.stensola@uia.no
- Phone
- +47 38 14 10 28