NOTE: It's coming time to start thinking of next semester's overarching theme. One possibility is "Synaptic plasticity", a broad topic that could include molecular mechanisms as well as population-level patterns of perceptual learning, LTP as well as neuromodulator-regulated changes. As a BCS topic, of course, the intent would be to choose approaches relevant to behavioral, computational, and systems-level questions. The relevance/necessity of bidirectional regulation of plasticity would be a prime topic. Following up on synchrony-dependent timing properties of synaptic plasticity mechanisms would establish a common thread with this semester's theme. Another, somewhat related theme is a neuroscience version of statistical learning: anything from perceptual learning to Bayesian representations of coding to temporal difference learning to dopamine (Schultz model) to the underlying synaptic rules that give rise to relevant population level learning properties. Thoughts? other ideas? Send them to Thom or bring them up at BCS.
For Spring semester 2009-2010, the Behavioral, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience (BCS) Journal Club will meet on Tuesdays from 12:00 to 1:15 pm in Uris Hall 205.
The overarching theme this semester is Oscillations. Adhering to this theme is not required, but recommended. Please interpret it broadly. Theories of gamma, beta, and theta oscillations in the nervous system are the centroid of intent, but alpha, sleep, circadian, etc. rhythms are also spot-on as are reasonably accessible dynamical systems topics from math and engineering.
To add yourself to the BCS-L mailing list, send a plain-text email to bcs-L-request@cornell.edu with the body of the message saying simply join. The subject line doesn't matter. Sending the message leave instead will unsubscribe you from the list. See Cornell's Lyris HowTo page for further details.
Please contact Thomas Cleland with any questions (David Smith is on walkabout this semester). BCS meeting archive.
In discussion, Patrick brought up Li et al (2004), a paper from Mu-ming Poo's lab showing that those presynaptic neurons that spike early, and that consequently (via STDP) have their synaptic weights upon a postsynaptic neuron strengthened, are also themselves rendered more excitable. That is, by this mechanism STDP can "work on the presynaptic neuron" as well as on its output synapse. The net effect of this can be to durably group a set of early-firing neurons together into a fully synchronous ensemble evoking activity in that postsynaptic cell.
In discussion, Guoshi brought up this modeling paper analyzing the property that visual input (lip reading) facilitates auditory input most effectively under moderate noise conditions.