Connectionists: World wide VVTNS series (fifth season): Wednesday, May 28, 2025, at 11:00 am EDT| Nischal Mainali, ELSC, The Hebrew University

[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

Nischal Mainali

ELSC, The Hebrew University

Mathematical regularities of irregular hippocampus

place codes


The lecture will be held on zoom on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, at *11:00 am
EDT *
To receive the link: https://www.wwtns.online/register-page



*Abstract: *Measurements from hippocampal place cells in small enclosures
have led  classical view of highly stereotyped neural tuning functions with
smooth, unimodal tuning fields that uniformly tile the environment.
However, recent experiments conducted in large spaces across multiple
species have revealed a much more irregular neural code than suggested by
the classical view. Indeed, place cells in large environments typically
fire in multiple locations, and the multiple firing fields of individual
cells, as well as those of the entire population, vary considerably in size
and shape. We recently showed that a simple mathematical model, wherein
firing fields are generated by thresholding realizations of a random
Gaussian process, accounts for the statistical properties of place fields
in precise quantitative detail. This model captures the observed statistics
of field sizes and positions and generates new quantitative predictions on
field shapes and topologies. Moreover, these statistics are universal
across species, but sensitive to the size and dimensionality of the
environment. We quantitatively verified these predictions using multiple
recent datasets from bats and rodents in one, two, and three dimensions,
across both small and large environments. Collectively, these findings
imply that common mechanism underlie the diverse statistical features
observed in different experiments and suggest that synaptic projections to
CA1 are predominantly random.

*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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