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lmazzuca - at - uoregon - dot - edu
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University of Oregon, Eugene

Welcome to the Mazzucato Lab
How do cognition and behavior emerge from the collective activity of large networks of neurons in our brain? Can we simulate these neural circuits in silico to build artificial neural networks that share our complex cognitive abilities? Leveraging a vast network of collaborations with experimental colleagues, our lab aims to explain the neural underpinnings of natural and artificial intelligence, with the belief that we can only understand cognitive function once we can build it from the bottom up in biologically plausible neural network models. We focus in particular on how our cognitive abilities change depending on context, our mental state, and varying levels of neuromodulators (such as serotonin). This contextual modulation occurs for example when we make more mistakes while distracted, or perform really well while attentive. We design brain-machine interfaces to read and write neural activity in real time with the long-term goal of rescuing cognitive deficits for therapeutic interventions in the human brain.

Our lab is focused on elucidating the neural basis of sensory perception, decision-making, motor generation, and associative learning. Some of the questions we focus on are:
  • What neural mechanisms underlie the temporal variability observed in naturalistic animal behavior?
  • How does behavior emerge from the complex temporal interactions of cortical and subcortical networks? 
  • How do different physiological states, such as arousal, task engagement, expectation, affect sensory processing and modulate an animal's behavior?
  • What drives associative learning at the level of synaptic plasticity in cortical and subcortical circuits?
To study these and other questions, we blend methods from statistical physics, information theory, machine learning, and dynamical systems. We combine analysis of neurophysiological data from large populations of neurons in behaving animals with theoretical models based on neural networks.

Our lab is part of the International Network for Bio-Inspired Computing (IN-BIC), a research consortium funded by the NSF Accelnet program including nodes in the US, Canada, and France, whose goal is to identify and implement novel approaches to understanding cognitive function and biologically inspired artificial intelligence.

Our lab is passionate about creating an inclusive environment promoting diversity. We embrace a notion of intellectual community enhanced by diversity along a number of dimensions, including race, ethnicity and national origins, gender identity and presentation, disability, class and religion. We aim at fostering greater creativity and encouraging collaborative innovation and interactions.​

JOB OPENINGS
We currently have two open postdoc positions:
- A postdoc position within the BRAIN Initiative collaboration (co-supervised by David McCormick) on the "Neural mechanisms of flexible behavior."
- A postdoc position co-supervised with Roozbeh Kiani (NYU) on causality in brain-machine interfaces and cognitive augmentation in monkeys.

 Learn more about our lab outreach program from our graphic novel "A trip into serotonin" by Audra McNamee, featured on the Oregon Quarterly Magazine and on Around the O.
Learn more about research in our lab at this  SciencePub talk:

Lab News

1 3 2022
"Researchers predict rat behaviors from brain activity" features our recent article on the Around the O.
12 01 2021
Ari Pakman's paper was accepted in NeurIPS 2021: "Estimating the Unique Information
of Continuous Variables"
12 01 2021
Nicu Istrate gives a flash talk at the Neuromatch Conference 4.0 : "A reservoir of timescales in random neural networks" - link.
12 01 2021
Luca gives a seminar at University of Washington: "Neural mechanisms generating temporal variability in cortical activity and in naturalistic behavior".
10 25 2021
Luca gives a colloquium at the Illinois Institute of Technology: "Neural mechanisms generating temporal variability in naturalistic behavior", video available here.
10 11 2021
Stefano's paper is published in Neuron!
"Metastable attractors explain the variable timing of stable behavioral action sequences" by
S. Recanatesi*, U. Pereira*, M. Murakami, Z. Mainen* and L. Mazzucato*
10 11 2021
New preprint out: "A reservoir of timescales in random neuronal networks"
by Merav Stern, Nicu Istrate, Luca Mazzucato, biorxiv.
09 20 2021
Audra McNamee's portraits of comic artists are on display in the new art exhibit at the Schnitzer museum: The Art of the News: Comics Journalism,
09 20 2021
The lab is participating (virtually) to the 2021 Bernstein Computational Neuroscience Conference with 2 posters and 1 talk:
  • Talk by M. Stern at the Bernstein Workshop on "Heterogeneous distribution of synaptic weights" with title: "A reservior of timescales in neural networks with heterogeneous clustering strengths."
  • Poster: "A reservoir of timescales in a random neural network" by N. Istrate, M. Stern  and L. Mazzucato. [video abstract by Nicu]
  • Poster: "A network model of contextual modulations of cortical processing" by L. Papadopoulos, M. Wehr and L. Mazzucato.
06 25 2021
The lab is awarded the new grant 1R01DA055439-01  "A mechanistic theory of serotonergic neuromodulation" in collaboration with the Niell lab at UO. This award is funded through the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) at the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA). Stay tuned for the exciting research!
06 23 2021
New preprint out: "Estimating the Unique Information of Continuous Variables in Recurrent Networks" in collaboration with Ari Pakman, Amin Nejatbakhsh, Dar Gilboa, Abdullah Makkeh, Michael Wibral, and Elad Schneidman!
06 15 2021
The lab is participating (virtually) to the 2021 BRAIN Initiative NIH meeting with 4 posters:
  • "Behavioral task requiring rapid shifts in context-dependent sensory valuations" by D. Hulsey, L. Mazzucato, M. Smear, D. McCormick, S. Jaramillo.
  • "Neural circuitry of predictive coding in mouse visual cortex" by N. Cain, H. Choi, M. Garrett, R. Larsen, J. Lecoq, L. Mazzucato, M. Valley, D. Wyrick
  • "Pan-cortical state dependent activity and functional connectivity exhibit complex spatiotemporal structure during spontaneous and stimulus-evoked behavior" by E. Vickers, D. Wyrick, P. Parker, C. Niell, L. Mazzucato, D. McCormick
  • "Brain states and flexible behavior" by D. McCormick, C. Niell, L. Mazzucato, S. Jaramillo, M. Wehr, M. Smear, D. Hulsey, E. Vickers, D. Wyrick, D. Nestvogel, S.Y. Jo
04 29 2021
04 25 2021
Audra McNamee is awarded the UO Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to support her project on the graphic novel of serotonergic neuromodulation!
Audra's graphic novel "A trip into serotonin" is featured on the Oregon Quarterly Magazine and on Around the O.
04 21 2021
David and Luca teach remotely at the ANDA 2021 G-Node Advanced Neural Data Analysis Course. Topic: Cortical computations via metastable activity.
03 10 2021
David's paper "State-dependent regulation of cortical processing speed via gain modulation" has been accepted in The Journal of Neuroscience!
02 23 2021
The lab is participating (virtually) to Cosyne 2021 with three posters:
  • "Predicting Perturbation Effects from Resting State Activity Using Functional Causal Flow" by Amin Nejatbakhsh, Francesco Fumarola, Saleh Esteki, Taro Toyoizumi, Roozbeh Kiani, Luca Mazzucato [Poster & Video]
  • "Synaptic plasticity shapes top-down modulation of cortical circuits with multiple interneuron types" by Marcel Jüngling, Leonidas Richter, Luca Mazzucato, Julijana Gjorgjieva
  • "Emergence of sensory and memory representations in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of mice" by B. Souza, J. Klee, L. Mazzucato, F. P. Battaglia. [Poster]
01 25 2021
Lia Papadopoulos joins the lab as a new postdoctoral researcher, after obtaining her Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania in Danielle Bassett's lab.
01 22 2021
Luca gives a colloquium for the Swartz Seminar Series at the Center for Neural Studies, New York University.
01 20 2021
Nice article from "Around the O" discussing the recent BRAIN collaboration grant awarded to the lab together with the McCormick, Niell, and Jaramillo labs.
01 04 2021
Audra McNamee (Computer Science major) joins the lab as a Resident Artist to work on a graphic novel on neuromodulation.
12 23 2020
Stefano Recanatesi gives a talk at the World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar (WWTNS) at 8am PST.
12 15 2020
Peregrine Painter joins the lab as a Research Assistant to study zebrafish social behavior in a collaboration with the Washbourne lab.
11 25 2020
Luca gives a talk at the World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar (WWTNS) at 8am PST (link here):
"The emergence and modulation of time in neural circuits and behavior"
11 25 2020
New paper out "Predicting perturbation effects from resting state activity using functional causal flow" in collaboration with the Kiani lab on the biorxiv!
11 06 2020
Merav Stern presents a poster at DeepMath2020: "Multiple Timescales of Activity in Recurrent Neural Networks
with Clustered Connectivity" (link here).
09 30 2020
The lab is participating (virtually) to Bernstein Conference 2020 with three posters:
08 18 2020
Luca is appearing at the virtual SciencePub on 8/18 at 5:30pm with neuroscience trivia, a popular science talk, and discussion with the audience: Searching for the origin of time in the brain.
08 03 2020
The Neuromatch Academy mentoring program was a resounding success, with several pods mentored by Luca obtaining great results and making awesome presentations, including these two:
- Finding hidden states in human fMRI data.
- Hierarchical Organization of Orientation Encoding in the Mouse Visual Cortex
07 13 2020
The lab attends the Neuromatch Academy for the next three weeks! Luca mentors student projects on population dynamics and attractor networks.
07 01 2020
The lab is participating (virtually) to ICMNS 2020 with one talk and two posters:
  • Merav Stern will talk about "Emergence of Slow Timescales In Highly Chaotic Random Neural Networks" as a Poster Prize winner!
  • Poster 1: "Emergence of Slow Timescales In Highly Chaotic Random Neural Networks" by M. Stern, N. Istrate, and L. Mazzucato
  • Poster 2: "State-dependent control of cortical processing speed via gain modulation" by D. Wyrick and L. Mazzucato
Our lab will take part to the Academic strike in support of Black lives on June 10th 2020. We will abstain from academic activities and devote our lab meeting to discussing data on systemic racism in academia and concrete ways to address it in our practices.

Here is an explanation of what it means to strike, a FAQ, and an awesome list of resources on fighting racism in academia. The preprint server arxiv.org will participate in the strike as well thus amplifying the action worldwide. This is a link to the form pledging your support.
05 08 2020
New paper "Hippocampal Network Reorganization Underlies the Formation of a Temporal Association Memory" in collaboration with the Losonczy and Fusi lab published in Neuron.
05 01 2020
New preprint by David Wyrick with the Smear and Ahmadian labs on the biorxiv:  "Sniff-synchronized, gradient-guided olfactory search by freely moving mice."
04 28 2020
Luca gives a virtual talk at the lab of Julijana Georgieva @ Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt.
04 08 2020
New preprint from the lab on the biorxiv:  "State-dependent control of cortical processing speed via gain modulation" by David and Luca.
03 16 2020
Our lab moved all operations online using remote videoconferencing to comply with the COVID-19 containment policies. Everybody works from home!
03 06 2020
Nicu gives a remote talk at the APS March Meeting presenting our latest results: "Heterogeneity of timescales in recurrent networks with clustered connectivity" in collaboration with Merav Stern.
02 23 2020
The lab is going to Cosyne 2020 to present three posters:
  • "Metastable attractors explain the variable timing of stable behavioral action sequences" by
    S. Recanatesi*, U. Pereira*, M. Murakami, Z. Mainen* and L. Mazzucato*
  • "Controlling processing speed in cortical circuits via gain modulation" by D. Wyrick and L. Mazzucato
  • "Heterogeneity of timescales in recurrent networks with clustered connectivity" by N. Istrate, M. Stern and L. Mazzucato
02 05 2020
Luca's tutorial and seminar at the Simons Workshop available online:
  • "Metastable attractors explain the variable timing of stable behavioral action sequences" [video] [slides]
  • "Tutorial on modeling and simulating neural population dynamics" [video]
02 05 2020
All videos and slides of talks at our Workshop on Physics of neural circuits and network dynamics @ Simons Center for Geometry and Physics.
01 26 2020
New preprint from the lab on the biorxiv:  "Metastable attractors explain the variable timing ofstable behavioral action sequences."
Great collaboration between theorists (Stefano from our lab + U. Pereira @ NYU) and experimentalists (M. Murakami + Z. Mainen @ Champalimaud).
01 01 2020
Lab in the news:
Quanta Magazine: This Year in Biology
10 18 2019
Nicu passes the Advance to Candidacy exam at the Physics Department, congratulations!
10 14 2019
David and Luca will fly to Jülich, Germany, in April 2020 to give a Tutorial on data analysis methods at the Advanced Neural Data Analysis Course.
10 10 2019
Mahboubeh Khoddam joins the lab for a Fall rotation (co-supervised with David McCormick). Very excited to work with her on analyzing whole brain activity during behavior!
09 17 2019
Big turnout at our Bernstein Workshop on "Cortical computations via metastable activity"
09 10 2019
New tutorial on spiking network simulations and Hidden Markov Model analyses
for the Summer School on Computational Neuroscience in Venice. Including customizable demo scripts for E-I clustered networks and a data analysis suite with simple examples.
06 19 2019
New review published on Current Opinion in Neurobiology:
"Cortical computations via metastable activity" in collaboration with the La Camera and Fontanini labs.
04 28 2019
Proposal accepted for a Bernstein Workshop on "Cortical computations via metastable activity" 
​September 17-18, 2019, in Berlin
04 18 2019
New biorxiv paper out
"Hippocampal network reorganization underlies the formation of a temporal association memory," in collaboration with the Fusi and Losonczy labs.
04 01 2019
New paper accepted in Nature Neuroscience
Sensory stimuli are recognized faster when they are expected. Comparing a spiking network model to cortical recordings from behaving animals, We showed that expectation accelerates sensory processing by modulating the intrinsically generated activity preceding stimulation.
04 01 2019
New "Artificial Intelligence and the Brain" Program at UO
Visitor program at the Institute of Neuroscience kicks off in April with Stefano Recanatesi (UW) and Gabe Ocker (Allen)
03 04 2019
Talk at the Cosyne Workshops "Why spikes"
03 04 2019
Proposal accepted for a Simons Workshop on the "Physics of neural circuits and network dynamics"  
January 27-31 2020 at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook.
Proposal accepted for a Simons Center Program on the "Neural networks and the Data Science Revolution: from theoretical physics to neuroscience, and back"
 
January 2020 at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, Stony Brook.