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).