Title: Anticipatory time-of day-dependent sensitization of human sensory cortices

Speaker: Christian Kell

Short Bio: Christian Kell is Professor of Translational Neuroscience at Goethe University and the Director of the Cooperative Brain Imaging Frankfurt. His research focuses on the relevance of the factor time for cognition: he investigates the dynamics of neural speech production control and neural dynamics underlying cognition that change in the course of a day, i.e. processes related with chronobiology. He collaborates with Marseille-based Elin Runnqvist and Benjamin Morillon. 

The brain needs to deal with very different situations at day, night or twilight. Lighting conditions on earth change predictably every day and night since millions of years so that organisms developed a circadian system that can prepare organisms for upcoming challenges. In parallel, the brain is affected by increasing sleep pressure every single day. In this presentation, I will focus on one recent intriguing finding in human cognitive neuroscience: Improved close-to-threshold visual perception at the times of twilight. I will present evidence for anticipatory decreases of endogenous activity fluctuations in human sensory cortices that improve the signal to noise ratio for weak sensory evidence accumulation. I will share newest analyses of a magnetoencephalography dataset measured during the course of two days suggesting that circadian and homeostatic signals impinge on different brain rhythms that may mediate the observed modulation of perception thresholds. 

Aix-Marseille Université
INS - Faculté de Médecine, 27, Boulevard Jean Moulin
Marseille, 13005, France