The next seminar “Modelling of materials – theory, model reduction and efficient numerical methods” will take place on Wednesday from 9:00 in lecture room K3. The talks will be given by Karolína Korvasová. Please see the details below.
Speaker: Karolína Korvasová
Title: Modeling and analysis to decode functional structure of the brain from its spontaneous activity
Abstract: Being able to infer the functional structure of cortical neural networks from their spontaneous activity would advance our understanding of neural dynamics and have important applications in the field of visual prosthetics, as functional properties of neurons in the visual cortex cannot be measured directly in blind subjects. We designed a method that estimates the structure of the orientation preference map in the primary visual cortex. Using this method, we were able to show that functional, as well as spatial properties of the sites stimulated with a cortical visual prosthesis in blind humans determine the perceptual outcome. In this talk I will first introduce some basic concepts of neurobiology and discuss how biological neural networks can be modeled. Next, I will present a large-scale model of the primary visual cortex developed in the group of Ján Antolík (MFF UK) that was used to design the method that infers functional structure from spontaneous activity. Finally, I will present the results of this method applied to electrophysiological recordings from the visual cortex of sighted non-human primates and blind human volunteers.