Control of neural populations and Communication Through Coherence
Michael Orieux (Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya)
Lundi 20 juin 2022, 15:00, en ligne.
Abstract. On many scales in the brain, from single neurons to populations of tens of thousands and more, oscillatory behaviors can be scouted. We are interested in the phase control of neural models in general, and more particularly in Excitatory-Inhibitory populations of neurons which are involved in a vast number of cognitive tasks, among which perception and attention through the well established Communication Through Coherence mechanism. CTC theorizes that populations of neurons must synchronize in order to communicate between themselves, giving a flexible approach to neural communication of the brain. In general for these models, the control strategy is achieved in two steps: first, we work in the Phase – Amplitude reduction around a stable periodic orbit and design a control to change the extended phase using the so-called weak coupling hypothesis. Then, we plug this control in the original equation to achieve the objective. The control itself represents input current in neurons or neural populations.
The dynamics of our populations are modeled through a mean field approach due to Montbrió and al, and we aim at synchronizing populations thanks to control theory where the control itself is the action of a higher cortical area (the so-called top-down mechanism).
Two populations (oscillators) will perturb a third system (receiver), and we want this third population to synchronize with, and to achieve optimal communication with, let us say, the first oscillator. We can quantify communication through indicators that will be precised during the talk.
