The Cologne Theoretical Neuroscience Forum was organized as a series of bi-monthly public talks and discussion rounds during the COVID pandemic to foster scientific exchange in an online format by inviting scientific experts in the field of theoretical and computational neurosciences. This series was completed in July 2022.

Organizers: Sacha van Albada, Silvia Daun, Martin Nawrot, Marc Tittgemeyer

Video resources of previous events are permanently accessible via our vimeo channel.

Public Online Talks

Thursday 14 July 2022, 16:00

Laura Naumann

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin

Title of the Talk: Invariant neural subspaces maintained by feedback modulation

Host: Sacha van Albada

– HYBRID EVENT –


Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/733282342

Thursday 12 May 2022, 11:00

Giovanni Pezzulo

Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Roma, Italy

Title of the Talk: Forming latent codes for decision-making and spatial navigation:
a generative modeling perspective

Host: Sacha van Albada

Thursday 10 March 2022, 11:00

Hanneke den Ouden

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, NL

Title of the Talk: (Mal)adaptive biases in motivated action: computations, brains and psychopathology

Host: Sacha van Albada

Thursday 13 January 2022, 17:00

Alexander van Meegen

Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany

Title of the Talk: Theory of recurrent neural networks – from parameter inference to intrinsic timescales in spiking networks

Host: Sacha van Albada

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/666775289

Thursday 09 December 2021, 17:00

Jan Benda

Institute for Neurobiology, University of Tuebingen, Germany

Title of the Talk: Encoding of behaviorally relevant high-frequency beats

Host: Martin Nawrot

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/644877029

Thursday 11 November 2021, 17:00

Frederike Petzschner

Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University

Title of the Talk: Computational Models of Compulsivity

Host: Marc Tittgemeyer

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/632125679

Thursday 14 October 2021, 17:00

Jonathan Rubin

Department of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh


Title of the Talk: Network dynamics in the basal ganglia and possible implications for Parkinson’s disease
Abstract: The basal ganglia are a collection of brain areas that are connected by a variety of synaptic pathways and are a site of significant reward-related dopamine release. These properties suggest a possible role for the basal ganglia in action selection, guided by reinforcement learning.  In this talk, I will discuss a framework for how this function might be performed. I will also present some recent experimental results and theory that call for a re-evaluation of certain aspects of this framework. Next, I will turn to the changes in basal ganglia activity observed to occur with the dopamine depletion associated with Parkinson’s disease. I will discuss some of the potential functional implications of some of these changes and, if time permits, will conclude with some new results that focus on delta oscillations under dopamine depletion.
Host: Silvia Daun

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/642616250

Wednesday 12 May 2021, 17:15

Friedemann Zenke

Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel

Title of the Talk: Finding the needle in the haystack – Functional circuit and network models for neuroscience
Host: Martin Nawrot

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/560362511

Thursday 11 March 2021, 17:00

Thomas Nowotny

University of Sussex

Title of the Talk:
Procedural connectivity and other recent advances for efficient spiking neural network simulations
Host: Martin Nawrot

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/522380851

Thursday 11 February 2021, 17:00

Benjamin Lindner

Theory of Complex Systems and Neurphysics,
HU Berlin and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin


Title of the Talk:
Neural network models – analysis of their spontaneous activity and their response to single-neuron stimulation
Host: Martin Nawrot

Link to the Talk: https://vimeo.com/520936819

Organizers

Sacha van Albada

Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine – Computational and Systems Neuroscience, Forschungszentrum Jülich & Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne


Silvia Daun

Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine – Cognitive Neuroscience, Forschungszentrum Jülich & Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne

Martin Nawrot

Computational Systems Neuroscience,
Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne

Marc Tittgemeyer

Translational Neurocircuitry, Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne & Cologne Excellence Cluster of Aging Research, University of Cologne

This is an initiative of the Collaborative Research Center Motor Control in Health and Disease (SFB 1451) and the Research Training Group Neural Circuit Analysis on the Cellular and Subcellular Level (GRK 1960).