Workshop 4: Rhythms and Oscillations (March 18-22, 2013)
Organizers: Carmen Canavier, Bard Ermentrout, Pascal Fries, and Todd Troyer
This workshop will focus on how mathematics can help us determine the functional roles that oscillations play in the nervous system. This workshop is timely in view of recent evidence that oscillations are critical for cognitive states and sensory processing. A broad range of oscillatory activity will be covered, including hippocampal and cortical oscillations, motor patterns, sensory processing and circadian rhythms. Competing theories will be presented on controversial issues, such as the role of gamma oscillations in binding of sensory information and the role of theta oscillations in hippocampal circuitry, with a view to how mathematics might help to resolve these controversies. We will try to draw parallels across different systems to see if central organizing principles emerge.
Recent theoretical advances in the understanding of several central pattern generators (CPGs) will be compared and contrasted, including the CPG for coordinating crawfish swimmerets, the CPG for respiratory pattern generation, the pyloric circuit, and spinal CPGs involved in human gaits. Circadian rhythms will be addressed at the level of the molecular clocks underlying the diurnal rhythm and at the level of the interaction of these clocks with the electrical activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Sensory systems will be represented by theoretical and experimental studies on the role of oscillations in distinguishing odors. Theoretical results on the nonlinear dynamics of coupled oscillators in the presence of noise will be presented and integrated into the context of the specific examples presented for different systems.
Accepted Speakers
- Thomas Akam, Centro Champalimaud, Programa de Neurociências, Lisboa, Portugal
- Tad Blair, Behavioral Neuroscience, UCLA
- Victoria Booth, Departments of Mathematics and Anesthesiology, University of Michigan
- Christoph Borgers, Department of Mathematics, Tufts University
- Steve Bressler, Florida Atlantic University
- Nicolas Brunel, University of Chicago
- Neil Burgess, Institute of Cognitive Neurosciences,University College London
- Tim Buschman, Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology
- Jessica Cardin, Department of Neurobiology, Yale School of medicine
- Laura Colgin, Center for Learning and Memory, University of Texas
- Pascal Fries, Ernst Strüngman Institute for Neuroscience Frankfurt
- Oded Ghitza, Biomedical Engineering, Boston University
- Lisa Giocomo, Centre for the Biology of Memory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway
- Boris Gutkin, Group for Neural Theory, Ecole Normale Superieure Paris
- Michael Hasselmo, Boston University Center for Memory and Brain
- Alexandre Hyafil, Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives
- Nancy Kopell, Center for Biodynamics, Department of Mathematics Boston University
- Peter Lakatos, Nathan Kline Institute
- Bill Lytton, SUNY Downstate
- Frances Skinner, Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Toronto Western Research Institute
- Paul Tiesinga, Donders Centre for Neuroscience
- Rufin VanRullen, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université de Toulouse, Université
