QLS Guest seminar - 23 November

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QLS  guest seminar  - Thursday 23 November at 11:30 ICTP, Central Area, 
2nd floor, old SISSA building, Via Beirut

Title: "Statistical Physics-inspired models of biological network: 
collective behavior in neuronal ensembles"

Speaker: Ulisse Ferrari - Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6, 
Institut de la Vision


Abstract:
In both cortices and sensory systems, information is represented and 
transmitted through the correlated activity of large neuronal networks. 
Methods borrowed from Statistical Physics and Machine Learning are 
powerful tools for characterizing the collective behavior of large 
systems and thus offer promising approaches to understand the activity 
of neuronal populations. In this talk I will show how the Maximum 
Entropy principle, applied to cortical in-vivo recording, allows for 
comparing the population behavior during wakefulness and deep sleep and 
eventually for identifying cell-assemblies, i.e. strongly co-activated 
groups of neurons that play a central role in memory consolidation. I 
will then use hidden layer models, point processes and “experimental” 
linear response theory to account for the non-linear stimulus processing 
in sensory networks such as the retina. These approaches allow for 
constructing high performing models of the retinal population response 
to visual stimuli and thus for characterizing how a network of neurons 
can encode and transmit visual information.

Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8444/

Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail: qls at ictp.it