Dr. Bard Ermentrout | "Neural Fields of Dreams: Modeling and Analysis of Large Scale Activity in the Brain"

INS Seminar Room, Campus Timone, Red Wing, 5th Floor.

Abstract :

With  the  ability  of  experimentalists  to  record  and  stimulate  with optical techniques,  it  is possible to determine the behavior of large numbers of neurons  as well  as to perturb  them. In  this  talk,  I  consider the behavior  of  systems  of  integro-differential equations  that  arise in the modeling  of  local  cortical  areas.  First I  discuss  some  issues  with  the analysis  and interpretation  of  the  spatio-temporal  data.  Next I introduce  the  class  of models  and  discuss computational and mathematical challenges associated with these nonlocal highly nonlinear
systems. I will show several examples of models of the experimental phenomena and then I will describe recent work on multi-layer models as well as some interesting dynamics that is hidden in simplified discontinuous approximations

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