Speaker:

Dr. Christian Tetzlaff, BCCN Göttingen

Abstract:

The environment, humans and animals are situated in, changes over a broad range of time scales. To guarantee adequate behaviors in such environments, on the one side, each individual requires the ability to learn, process, and memorize moments of the environment over different time scales. On the other side, the dynamics of neural systems is determined by several adaptive processes which also proceed on a wide variety of time scales. In this talk, I will show our results linking several adaptive processes of neural systems, as synaptic plasticity and scaling, to the learning and memory processes on the behavioral level. This enables us, for instance, to provide potential explanations for the intriguing memory effects of memory destabilization and consolidation or to analyze the interactions between different memory systems as working and long-term memory.

Speaker:

Michael Fauth, BCCN Göttingen

Abstact:

Experiments show that two cortical neurons are usually unconnected or connected via multiple synapses. We analyze under which conditions this can be explained by the interaction of structural and synaptic plasticity mechanisms. For this, a stochastic model of structural plasticity with probabilities depending on synaptic weights is used. Given this model, the experiments can be explained when synaptic weights grow with postsynaptic activity. Furthermore, the model predicts different neuronal activities for different datasets, which relate well to the corresponding experimental values. Finally, we demonstrate that the connection between two neurons undergoes a hysteresis when changing the neuronal activity. This indicates potential for stable collective information storage, although the single synapses remain plastic.

Date:

Wednesday, 15 October 2014, 15:00

Venue:

GRS Lecture Theater, building 16.15, room 2009

Announcement as pdf file: