-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Another Math-Neuro talk: Oct 9th Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 15:03:15 -0400 From: Paul Cisek paul.cisek@umontreal.ca

Hello,

We are going to have another math-neuro presentation next week, on Tuesday Oct 9th, from 14h00-15h00 in room 4106. The presentation will be by Jean-Phillippe Thivierge, who is briefly visiting from Indiana (I apologize for doing this on a Tuesday before the "travaux récents", but it was the only possible time). Here's an abstract:

"How Random is Brain Activity?"

"Neurons of several regions of the brain, including hippocampus and cortex, have a tendency to spontaneously alternate between states of activity and quiescence at non-periodic, seemingly random times. Despite the ubiquitous nature of this phenomenon across species and protocols, the mechanisms responsible remain largely unknown. Using computer simulations, we show that spontaneous synchronization can emerge naturally from completely deterministic cellular interactions, without randomness. Noise-free simulations capture the Poisson-like distribution of both spontaneous and evoked activity recorded in acute CA1 slices of hippocampus, and suggest new experiments and their expected outcome. This talk is hoped to generate some interesting discussions among neurophysiologists and modelers."

Regards,

Paul

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Paul Cisek, Ph.D. Department of physiology, room 4141 University of Montreal C.P. 6128 Succursale Centre-ville Montreal QC H3C 3J7 Canada phone: 514-343-6111 x4355 FAX: 514-343-2111 email: paul.cisek@umontreal.ca mailto:paul.cisek@umontreal.ca

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