1. What is (computational) neuroscience? Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system.It is a an interdisciplinary sciencethat involves biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, physics, psychology and even philosophy.Different approaches are used to study the molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computational, and medical aspects of the nervous system.Golgi staining Ramon y Cajal -- anatomy Nobel Prize:Selverston lab, 1960s Neural circuit for chewing In lobster. Wu lab, 2004 Spiral waves in cortex(diam: 3-4 mm) fMRI, 1990s BOLD signal , brain areas John Rinzel (NYU), Kiev, 2011

2.

Some current problems, disease-related, under study: experimentally and computationally.

Parkinsons disease deep brain stimulation (DBS)

• Positioning of the device

• Time course of stimulation

Tinnitis

Epilepsy

• Prediction of an upcoming episode

• Breakup the undesired synchrony

Hearing loss - cochlear implants

• Design

• Stimulus timing

Motor prostheses -brain machine interface (BMI)

3.

Involved in the control of movement

Site of surgical procedures

--Deep Brain Stimulation(DBS)

Parkinsons Disease dysfunction of Basil Ganglia (show video) 4. 5. From McIntyre working group, 2006.3-D reconstruction + DBS electrode placement + simulation of electric fields 6. Temporal pattern of pulse delivery see P Tass, use of nonlinear dynamical systems 7. Computational Neuroscience What computations are done by a neural system? How are they done? WHAT? Feature detectors, eg visual system. Coincidence detection for sound localization. Memory storage. Code:firing rate, spike timing. Statistics of spike trains Information theory Decision theory Descriptive models HOW? Molecular & biophysical mechanisms atcell &synaptic levels firing properties, coupling. Subcircuits. System level. 8. Computational Neuroscience What computations are done by a neural system? How are they done? WHAT? Feature detectors, eg visual system.(Hubel & Wiesel & Sperry: Nobel, 1981) Coincidence detection for sound localization. Memory storage. Code:firing rate, spike timing. Statistics of spike trains Information theory Decision theory Descriptive models HOW? Molecular & biophysical mechanisms atcell &synaptic levels firing properties, coupling. Subcircuits. System level. 9. In vivo data from the barn owl shows auditory brain stem (NL) neurons encode ITD for sound localization A B C D E PLACE CODE OUTPUTS DELAY LINE INPUTS DELAY LINE INPUTS C 5 left ear leadsright ear leads INTERAURALTIMEDIFFERENCE(sec) 100 50 0 4409 Hz 0 -300 -150 150 300 -30 sec % MAXIMUM RESPONSE A neural computation by single cellbut how? And soooo fast, when spikes and synaptic potentials are 1 ms time scale 10. Dynamics of Excitability and Repetitive Activity Auditory brain stem neuronsfire phasically,not to slow inputs. w/ Svirskiset al, J Neurosci 2002 11. Neuroscience-- a field with foundational understanding based on mathematical & computational approaches Nobel Prize, 1959 shared with JC Eccles Wilfrid Rall (starting 1950s) developed cable theory for dendrites 12. Computational Neuroscience What computations are done by a neural system? How are they done? WHAT? Feature detectors, eg visual system. Coincidence detection for sound localization. Memory storage. Code:firing rate, spike timing. Statistics of spike trains Information theory Decision theory Descriptive models HOW? Molecular & biophysical mechanisms atcell &synaptic levels firing properties, coupling. Subcircuits. System level.