Stefan Rotter (Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Freiburg & Faculty of Biology)

"Activity Dynamics in Neocortical Neuronal Networks"

Neurons in the neocortex of mammals typically fire action potentials at very low rates, while their spike trains are asynchronous and irregular, indicating a very complex dynamics. We attempt to relate these and other characteristics of idle brain dynamics to the physiology of neurons and the topology of the underlying network, where the latter is currently known only in terms of gross statistical parameters. Specifically, I will explain the role of correlations between neurons for population dynamics in large-scale networks.