lmazzuca - at - uoregon - dot - edu |
University of Oregon, Eugene |
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Welcome to the Mazzucato Lab
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How do cognition and behavior emerge from the collective activity of large neuronal circuits in our brain? Can we simulate these neural circuits in silico to build artificial neural networks that explain brain function? Can we use our knowledge of circuit dynamics to build brain-machine interfaces to ameliorate cognitive abilities? Our lab leverages close collaborations with several experimental groups to address these questions, in particular:
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:
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Comics
Lecture notes on
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TalksLearn more about research in our lab at this talks:
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Lab News
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Nov 2024
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Luca's interview on The Transmitter about the benefits of open source datasets.
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Nov 2024
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Danny Burnham is awarded the Accelnet INBIC Fellowship for exchange programs, funded by the NSF, to visit Fanny Cazettes' lab in Marseille in the Spring 2025 and work on serotonergic neuromodulation in decision-making; and to support his attendance to the INBIC NeuroAI conference in 2025 to present his results.
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Oct 2024
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Danny Brown is awarded a full financial support to attend FADEx 2025 Winter Program, focused on NeuroAI, to be held in France from January 20 to January 24, 2025.
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'24/'25
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Luca starts his sabbatical at University of Padua (Italy) visiting the Padua Neuroscience Center and the Physics Department.
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9 1 2024
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F. David Wandler joins our NeuroAI Center as a postdoc, co-supervised with James Murray.
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8 2 2024
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New preprint out! Probabilistic modeling reveals coordinated social interaction states and their multisensory bases led by Sarah Stednitz and Andrew Lesak in collaboration with the Scott lab at the University of Melbourne (Australia).
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6 16 2024
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New preprint out! Expressivity of Neural Networks with Fixed Weights and Learned Biases led by Ezekiel Williams in collaboration with the Lajoie lab at MILA (Montreal).
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4 8 2024
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New biorxiv preprint out: Modulation of metastable ensemble dynamics explains optimal coding at moderate arousal in auditory cortex, led by Lia Papadopoulos in collaboration with the McCormick lab, funded our BRAIN R01 collaboration R01-NS118461.
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April/May 2024
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The Mazzucato lab spends two months at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience @ UC Berkeley! Check out the talk on: Multitasking RNN with baseline modulations
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3 20 2024
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Giacomo Barzon joins the lab as a Research Assistant! Giacomo is a PhD candidate at University of Padua, Italy.
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2 27 2024
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New article published in Cell Reports: Decision-making dynamics are predicted by arousal and uninstructed movements, co-led by Daniel Hulsey in collaboration with the McCormick and Jaramillo labs funded our BRAIN R01 collaboration R01-NS118461.
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1 17 2024
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New comics published by Audra McNamee in Oregon Quarterly: "She Risked Everything for Women, Workers, and Justice"
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1 17 2024
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New article published in eLife: A reservoir of timescales emerges in recurrent circuits with heterogeneous neural assemblies, co-led by Merav Stern and Nicu Istrate..
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12 7 2023
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New article published in Physical Review Research: Predicting the effect of micro-stimulation on macaque prefrontal activity based on spontaneous circuit dynamics, in collaboration with the Kiani lab and co-led by Amin Nejatbakhsh, Francesco Fumarola.
In the News: "New research could improve treatments for Parkinson's, epilepsy" |
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10 26 2023
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Our lab goes to NDiSTEM SACNAS 2023 in Portland! |
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9 30 2023
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Luca receives a CAREER NSF Award to investigate the Neural Mechanisms of Optimal Performance!
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9 16 2023
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Danny Brown joins the lab as a graduate student, co-supervised with Nicki Swann!
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8 15 2023
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Anandita De, PhD, joins the lab as a postdoc!
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8 15 2023
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Michael Johnson joins the lab as a Research Assistant!
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8 7 2023
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New article published in PNAS: "Multitasking via baseline control in recurrent neural networks" in collaboration with Fanny Cazettes's, Alfonso Renart's and Zach Mainen's labs.
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6 1 2023
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Danny Burnham is awarded a Summer Internship at the Center for Computational Neuroscience (Flatiron Institute) to collaborate with Mitya Chklovskii.
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4 13 2023
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New article published in Nature Neuroscience: "A repertoire of foraging decision variables in the mouse brain" in collaboration with Fanny Cazettes's, Alfonso Renart's and Zach Mainen's labs.
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3 20 2023
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Luca spends the Spring term as a Visiting Scientist at the Flatiron Institute and New York University.
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3 2 2023
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New preprint out on biorxiv: "Decision-making dynamics are predicted by arousal and uninstructed movements" led by Daniel Hulsey, in collaboration with David McCormick and Santiago Jaramillo's labs at University of Oregon.
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3 1 2023
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The lab goes to Cosyne to present two posters (Lia Papadopoulos, Danny Burnham) and a talk at the Cosyne Workshops (Luca)
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11 01 2022
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Luca gives an outreach talk at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (Portland): What happens in your brain when you're "in the zone"
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Fall 2022
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Welcome to our new graduate student Andrew Lesak (Physics), supported by an NSF GRFP Fellowship! Andrew will be investigating how changes in the microbiome affect social behavior in juvenile zebrafish!
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9 14 2022
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New preprint out "A repertoire of foraging decision variables in the mouse brain" together with Fanny Cazettes, Masayoshi Murakami, Joao P Morais, Alfonso Renart, Zachary Mainen. A wonderful collaboration with the Mainen and Cazettes lab on the different decision-making strategies mice deploy during naturalistic foraging.
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Summer 2022
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Welcome to our new graduate students Valerie Beale (Physics), Conner Carnahan (Physics) and Danny Burnham (Biology), who just joined the lab!
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8 12 2022
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Congratulations to Dr. David Wyrick for defending his PhD thesis "Contextual Modulation of Naturalistic Behavior and Sensory Processing" at the Biology Department!
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5 12 2022
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New preprint out "Coexisting persistent and dynamic representations of stimulus, time and trial outcome emerge in the hippocampus-prefrontal circuitry during learning of a temporal association" by Bryan C Souza, Jan L Klee, Luca Mazzucato*, Francesco Battaglia*. A wonderful collaboration with the Battaglia lab on the neural basis of associative learning!
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5 13 2022
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Congratulations to Dr. Nicu Istrate for defending his PhD thesis "A reservoir of timescales in random neural networks" at the Physics Department!
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5 12 2022
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New preprint out "Baseline control of optimal performance in recurrent neural networks" by Shun Ogawa*, Francesco Fumarola*, and Luca Mazzucato
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3 28 2022
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Luca is awarded the R01 grant "Causal power of cortical neural ensembles: mechanisms and utility for brain perturbations" from the National Institute of Mental Health, in collaboration with Roozbeh Kiani (NYU).
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3 28 2022
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Cosyne 2022: The lab presented 2 talks and 2 posters!!
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3 21 2022
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APS March Meeting 2022: Lia Papadopoulos presented a contributed talk on "Metastable circuit dynamics explains optimal coding of auditory stimuli at moderate arousals," (Lia Papadopoulos, Michael Wehr, Luca Mazzucato)
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2 10 2022
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New preprint out: "Neural mechanisms underlying the temporal organization of naturalistic animal behavior" by Luca.
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1 3 2022
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"Researchers predict rat behaviors from brain activity" features our recent article on the Around the O.
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12 01 2021
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Ari Pakman's paper was accepted in NeurIPS 2021: "Estimating the Unique Information
of Continuous Variables" |
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12 01 2021
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Nicu Istrate gives a flash talk at the Neuromatch Conference 4.0 : "A reservoir of timescales in random neural networks" - link.
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12 01 2021
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Luca gives a seminar at University of Washington: "Neural mechanisms generating temporal variability in cortical activity and in naturalistic behavior".
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10 25 2021
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Luca gives a colloquium at the Illinois Institute of Technology: "Neural mechanisms generating temporal variability in naturalistic behavior", video available here.
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10 11 2021
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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* |
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10 11 2021
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New preprint out: "A reservoir of timescales in random neuronal networks"
by Merav Stern, Nicu Istrate, Luca Mazzucato, biorxiv. |
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09 20 2021
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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,
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09 20 2021
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The lab is participating (virtually) to the 2021 Bernstein Computational Neuroscience Conference with 2 posters and 1 talk:
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06 25 2021
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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!
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06 23 2021
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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!
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06 15 2021
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The lab is participating (virtually) to the 2021 BRAIN Initiative NIH meeting with 4 posters:
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04 29 2021
04 25 2021
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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.
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04 21 2021
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David and Luca teach remotely at the ANDA 2021 G-Node Advanced Neural Data Analysis Course. Topic: Cortical computations via metastable activity.
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03 10 2021
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David's paper "State-dependent regulation of cortical processing speed via gain modulation" has been accepted in The Journal of Neuroscience!
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02 23 2021
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The lab is participating (virtually) to Cosyne 2021 with three posters:
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01 25 2021
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Lia Papadopoulos joins the lab as a new postdoctoral researcher, after obtaining her Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania in Danielle Bassett's lab.
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01 22 2021
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Luca gives a colloquium for the Swartz Seminar Series at the Center for Neural Studies, New York University.
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01 20 2021
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Nice article from "Around the O" discussing the recent BRAIN collaboration grant awarded to the lab together with the McCormick, Niell, and Jaramillo labs.
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01 04 2021
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Audra McNamee (Computer Science major) joins the lab as a Resident Artist to work on a graphic novel on neuromodulation.
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12 23 2020
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Stefano Recanatesi gives a talk at the World Wide Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar (WWTNS) at 8am PST.
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12 15 2020
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Peregrine Painter joins the lab as a Research Assistant to study zebrafish social behavior in a collaboration with the Washbourne lab.
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11 25 2020
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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" |
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11 25 2020
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New paper out "Predicting perturbation effects from resting state activity using functional causal flow" in collaboration with the Kiani lab on the biorxiv!
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11 06 2020
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Merav Stern presents a poster at DeepMath2020: "Multiple Timescales of Activity in Recurrent Neural Networks
with Clustered Connectivity" (link here). |
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09 30 2020
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The lab is participating (virtually) to Bernstein Conference 2020 with three posters:
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08 18 2020
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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.
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08 03 2020
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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 |
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07 13 2020
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The lab attends the Neuromatch Academy for the next three weeks! Luca mentors student projects on population dynamics and attractor networks.
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07 01 2020
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The lab is participating (virtually) to ICMNS 2020 with one talk and two posters:
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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. |
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05 08 2020
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New paper "Hippocampal Network Reorganization Underlies the Formation of a Temporal Association Memory" in collaboration with the Losonczy and Fusi lab published in Neuron.
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05 01 2020
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New preprint by David Wyrick with the Smear and Ahmadian labs on the biorxiv: "Sniff-synchronized, gradient-guided olfactory search by freely moving mice."
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04 28 2020
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Luca gives a virtual talk at the lab of Julijana Georgieva @ Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt.
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04 08 2020
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New preprint from the lab on the biorxiv: "State-dependent control of cortical processing speed via gain modulation" by David and Luca.
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03 16 2020
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Our lab moved all operations online using remote videoconferencing to comply with the COVID-19 containment policies. Everybody works from home!
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03 06 2020
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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.
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02 23 2020
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The lab is going to Cosyne 2020 to present three posters:
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02 05 2020
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All videos and slides of talks at our Workshop on Physics of neural circuits and network dynamics @ Simons Center for Geometry and Physics.
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01 26 2020
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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). |
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01 14 2020
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Video of talks at our Program in Neural networks and the Data Science Revolution: from theoretical physics to neuroscience, and back:
Jeffrey Pennington (Google Brain): The Surprising Simplicity of Overparameterized Deep Neural Networks Jeffrey Pennington: Deep learning and operator-valued free probability Danilo Rezende (DeepMind): Generative Models and Symmetries |
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01 01 2020
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10 18 2019
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Nicu passes the Advance to Candidacy exam at the Physics Department, congratulations!
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10 14 2019
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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.
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10 10 2019
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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!
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09 17 2019
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Big turnout at our Bernstein Workshop on "Cortical computations via metastable activity"
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09 10 2019
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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. |
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07 25 2019
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06 19 2019
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New review published on Current Opinion in Neurobiology:
"Cortical computations via metastable activity" in collaboration with the La Camera and Fontanini labs. |
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05 02 2019
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Recent paper on expectation in the news
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04 28 2019
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Proposal accepted for a Bernstein Workshop on "Cortical computations via metastable activity"
September 17-18, 2019, in Berlin |
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04 18 2019
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New biorxiv paper out
"Hippocampal network reorganization underlies the formation of a temporal association memory," in collaboration with the Fusi and Losonczy labs. |
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04 01 2019
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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. |
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04 01 2019
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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) |
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03 04 2019
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Talk at the Cosyne Workshops "Why spikes"
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03 04 2019
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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. |
