Connectionists: Fwd: [seminar.wwtns] World wide VVTNS series (6th season): Wednesday, January 7, 2025, at 11:00 am ET - Carlos Brody, Princeton Neuroscience Institute

[David Hansel]

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

You are cordially invited to the VVTNS 2026 opening lecture

Carlos Brody

Princeton Neuroscience Institute

 on the topic of


*Towards using large-scale, cross-brain neuronal recordings *

*to identify the brain’s internal signals*

to identify the brain’s internal signals

The lecture will be held on zoom on January 7, 2026, at *11:00 am ET *

> To receive the link: https://www.wwtns.online/register-page
>
*Abstract: *Neural activity is often analyzed with respect to external
referents, such as the onset of a sensory stimulus or an overt motor
action. Simultaneous recordings allow referencing neurons’ activity to each
other and thus detecting signals that are internal to the organism.
Further, multi-region simultaneous recordings allow observing how these
internal signals are coordinated across the brain. Following this logic in
rats performing a perceptual decision-making task, we recorded
simultaneously from thousands of neurons across up to 20 brain regions at
once. Here we report two internal signals which we found to profoundly
shape decision-related neural dynamics and brain states. First, we decoded
the continuously evolving decision state separately from each region, and
found surprisingly large magnitude co-fluctuations in these measures.
Dimensionality analysis showed these to be dominated by a single state
variable, suggesting that only a single decision-making computation, not
multiple parallel computations, are being carried out during the analyzed
period. Second, we found that the precise time the subject commits to a
decision – a covert event that we decoded from large-scale neural activity
in primary motor cortex – was accompanied by a coordinated change, across
the brain, from a decision formation to a post-commitment state. The two
states differ substantially in their choice-predictive neural dynamics and
in their inter-region correlations. Therefore, knowing the time of this
state change on single trials is needed to correctly parse fundamentally
different phases of decision-making. Overall, our data suggest that
internally-referenced signals and state changes, not timelocked to external
events but detectable through simultaneous recordings, are major features
of neural activity during cognition.

*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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