Top-down control of neural dynamics

The mammalian cerebral cortex can be subdivided into multiple areas on both anatomical and functional grounds. These areas are organized into multiple parallel pathways integrating information along various streams which ultimately underlies brain function as a whole. Top-down control of areas from regions that are located higher in the cortical hierarchy can have a profound impact on cortical dynamics. This may for example take the form of altering network states via selective activation of sub-networks, the expansion of dimensionality of neural activity, the modulation of ON-OFF dynamics by selective attention, or the modulation of timescales, facilitating context dependent information processing. In the workshop we want to bring together findings from experimental studies and computational modeling to discuss the role of as well as the mechanisms behind top-down control of neural dynamics.