Whole brain dynamics: Modeling and applications

Organizers

Victor Buendía Ruiz-Azuaga | University of Tübingen and Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany

Ana Paula Millán Vidal | University of Granada, Spain

Abstract

Technologies such as magnetic resonance or magnetoencephalography have enabled us to record brain activity at a large scale with high spatial –and more recently, also temporal– resolution. Understanding the dynamics of neural activity is essential in order to unveil how the brain computes and processes information in a holistic manner. This research approach has proven to be very useful for clinical applications, which include the study of neurodegenerative diseases, ageing, or epilepsy. However, many features of the observed activity patterns remain unexplained. Computational models at a large scale are an invaluable tool for rationalizing experimental observations by combining structural data of brain connectivity with reduced, effective dynamical models. In this workshop, we aim to bring together the European community of researchers studying different approaches to modeling whole-brain activity. From basic principles to the most recent applications, the idea is to have a space of discussion and exchange of ideas to overcome some of the current challenges of the field, such as the difficulty of parameter estimation from recordings, the structure-function dichotomy, limitations of the dynamical systems currently used, or the comparison between datasets obtained with different techniques.

Schedule (CEST)

Tuesday, Sept 26

14:00

Oren Shriki | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Large scale network models of critical brain dynamics

15:00

Christoffer G. Alexandersen | University of Oxford, UK
Alzheimer’s and oscillators: Evolving networks in whole-brain modeling

15:30

Giovanni Rabuffo | Institute de neurosciences des systèms, France 
Probing the mechanisms of global brain reconfiguration after local manipulations

16:00

30 min coffee break

16:30

Simona Olmi | Instituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Italy
Population spiking and bursting in next-generation neural masses with spike-frequency adaptation

17:30

Sepehr Mortaheb | University of Liège, Belgium 
Resting brain and mind: How brain dynamics are associated with ongoing cognition

18:00

Yonatan Sanz-Perl | University Pampeu Fabra, Spain 
Visualizing perturbations of conscious states using whole-brain models combined with variational autoencoders

18:30

End