Michele Migliore

The implementation of brain-inspired cognitive architectures using large-scale realistic computational models

Michele Migliore

Institute of Biophysics, National Research Council, Palermo, Italy
Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA

Understanding the neural basis of brain functions and dysfunctions has a huge impact on a number of scientific, technical, and social fields. Experimental findings have given and continue to give important clues at different levels, from subcellular biochemical pathways to behaviors involving many brain regions. However, most of the underlying mechanisms and the related computational and functional processes are still largely unknown or poorly understood. This mainly depends on the practical impossibility to obtain detailed simultaneous in vivo recordings from an appropriate set of cells, making it nearly impossible to decipher and understand the emergent properties and behavior of large neuronal networks. We are addressing this problem using large scale computational models of biologically inspired cognitive architectures, which require substantial resources for storage, computing, and scientific visualization that can be available only through large international research infrastructures, such as the Human Brain Project (HBP). I will present and discuss the workflows and the techniques used within the HBP to implement entire brain areas following their natural 3D structure. To illustrate the approach and its relevance to understand computational and functional processes, I will show the results obtained for the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb. The main goal is to understand the mechanisms underlying higher brain functions, helping the development of innovative therapies to treat brain diseases. Through movies and interactive simulations, I will show how and why the dynamical interaction among neurons can predict new results and account for a variety of puzzling experimental findings.

Short CV

D.Phil. in Physics (1980, Summa cum Laude, University of Palermo, Italy). Visiting Professor of Cybernetics at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Palermo (Italy), Visiting Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (Italy), and Visiting Scientist at the Department of Neuroscience of the Yale University School of Medicine (New Haven, USA). His lab is involved in modelling realistic neurons and networks, synaptic integration processes, and plasticity mechanisms. The main long-term goal is to understand the emergence of higher brain functions and dysfunctions from cellular processes, implementing new tools and using state of the art simulation techniques on different supercomputer systems.