Connectionists: World Wide VVTNS series (fifth season): Wednesday, January 29, 2025, at 11:00 am EST| Hadas Benisty, Technion, Haifa

[David Hansel]

[image: VVTNS.png]
https://www.wwtns.online
<https://streaklinks.com/A9c7PbbpKY7PxB6PaAJWGD3-/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wwtns.online>
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on twitter: wwtns at TheoreticalWide

You are cordially invited to the lecture given by

Hadas Benisty

Technion, Haifa


 on the topic of

A Geometric Approach for the Study of Functional Connectivity Dynamics


The lecture will be held on zoom on Wednesday, January 29, 2025, at *11:00
am EST *
To receive the link: https://www.wwtns.online/register-page

*Abstract: * Functional connectivity has been the focus of many research
groups aiming to study the interaction between cells and brain regions. A
standard method for analyzing connectivity is to statistically compare
pairwise interactions between cells or brain regions across behavioral
states or conditions. This methodology ignores the intrinsic properties of
functional connectivity as a multivariate and dynamic signal, expressing
the correlational configuration of the network. In this talk, I will
present a geometric approach, combining Graph Theory and Riemannian
Geometry to build "a graph of graphs" and extract the latent dynamics of
the overall correlational structure. Using this approach, we formulate the
statistical relations between network dynamics and spontaneous behavior as
a second-order Taylor’s expansion. Our analysis shows that fast
fluctuations in functional connectivity of large-scale cortical networks
are closely linked to variations in behavioral metrics related to the
arousal state. We further expand this methodology to longer time scales to
study the effect of dopamine on network dynamics in the primary motor
cortex (M1) during learning. We developed a series of analysis methods
indicating that as animals learn to perform a motor task, the network of
pyramidal neurons in layer 2-3 gradually and monotonically reorganizes
toward an "expert" configuration. Our results highlight the critical role
of dopamine in driving synaptic plasticity: Blocking dopaminergic
neurotransmission locally in M1 prevented motor learning at the behavioral
level and concomitantly halted plasticity changes in network activity and
in functional connectivity.

*About VVTNS : Launched as the World Wide  Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar
(WWTNS) in November 2020 and renamed in homage to Carl van Vreeswijk in
Memoriam (April 20, 2022), Speakers have the occasion to talk about
theoretical aspects of their work which cannot be discussed in a setting
where the majority of the audience consists of experimentalists. The
seminars, **held on Wednesdays at 11 am ET,**  are 45-50 min long followed
by a discussion. The talks are recorded with authorization of the speaker
and are available to everybody on our YouTube channel.*


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