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Understanding the Evolution of Neocortical Circuits| old_uid | 12886 |
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| title | Understanding the Evolution of Neocortical Circuits |
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| start_date | 2013/10/15 |
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| schedule | 16h |
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| online | no |
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| details | GNT Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar Series |
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| summary | Over the past 65 million years, the evolution of mammals led --in
several lineages-- to a dramatic increase in brain size. During this
process, some neocortical areas, including the primary sensory ones,
expanded by many orders of magnitude. The primary visual cortex, for
instance, measured about a square millimeter in late cretaceous stem
eutherians but in homo sapiens comprises more than 2000 mm2. If we could
rewind time and restart the evolution of large and large brained
mammals, would the network architecture of neocortical circuits take the
same shape or would the random tinkering process of biological evolution
generate different or even fundamentally distinct designs? In this talk,
I will argue that, based on the consolidated mammalian phylogenies
available now, this seemingly speculative question can be rigorously
approached using a combination of quantitative brain imaging,
computational, and dynamical systems techniques. Our studies on visual
cortical circuit layout in a broad range of eutherian species indicate
that neuronal plasticity and developmental network self-organization
have restricted the evolution of neuronal circuitry underlying
orientation columns to a few discrete design alternatives. Our
theoretical analyzes predict that different evolutionary lineages adopt
virtually identical circuit designs when using only qualitatively
similar mechanisms of developmental plasticity. |
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| responsibles | Koechlin |
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