“Broadband” cortical neuronal ensembles

Linking (sub)cellular biophysics to neuronal population electrical activity is pivotal for understanding the emergence of cortical network states. Making sense of the large diversity of response time scales in vivo requires new ways to probe single-cell properties.

Going beyond the insights offered by classic current-frequency descriptions, early modelling studies suggested that the characterization of neuronal responses to non-stationary fast inputs could indeed predict ensemble properties. By verifying those predictions experimentally first in rat and then in human cortical cells, we were the first to report an unanticipated broad “response bandwidth” of the action potential initiation. This proved that cortical ensembles, in particular human neuronal populations, would track fast-varying inputs and relay them in their spike trains, far beyond the cut-off imposed by membrane passive electrical properties and mean firing rates.

In this talk, I will introduce and review the experimental work, emphasizing the unique opportunities offered by live human tissue cell electrophysiology to reveal quantitative inter-species differences in information processing.

Lecture video: sorry, no video available at this time

Lecture infos

School: XLIII Annual School 2024 - Neurotechnologies to understand and restore the nervous system

Date: 16.09.2024 - 09:30

Speaker

Giugliano M.

UNIMORE

MG is Principal Investigator and Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the Univ. of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and retains a small appointment as a Professor of Physiology at SISSA. He graduated summa cum laude in Electronic Engineering in 1997 at the Univ. of Genova (Italy), and moved abroad in 2001, after completing a PhD in Bioengineering with a thesis in Computational Neuroscience. He was awarded with a “long-term fellowship” by Human Frontiers Science Program Organization, to pursue postdoctoral training in experimental Electrophysiology and Neurobiology at the Dept. of Physiology of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bern (Switzerland). There, he worked with Prof. Dr. H.R. Luescher and Prof. Dr. S. Fusi. In 2005, he joined the experimental lab of Prof. Dr. H. Markram as a junior group leader at the Brain Mind Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL). In 2008, I joined as a “tenure-track” Assistant Professor of Neuroscience the Dept. of Biomedical Sciences of the Univ. of Antwerp (Belgium), where he was appointed as the successor of Prof. Dr. E. De Schutter. During the following 11 years, he performed and directed interdisciplinary research in experimental Neurobiology, Neuroengineering, and Computational Neuroscience, heading the Lab for Theoretical Neurobiology and Neuroengineering. From 2013 to 2015, he also held a 20% visiting appointment at the Neuroelectronics Flanders Institute of IMEC, Leuven (Belgium). He was tenured in 2012, promoted to Associate Professor in 2013, and to Full Professor in 2016. During the same years, he also had visiting appointments at the Dept. of Computer Science of the Univ. of Sheffield (UK) and at the Brain Mind Institute of the EPFL (Switzerland). In 2019, he left Belgium to join as a Professor of Physiology the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste, Italy, moving his lab at SISSA’s Neuroscience Area, and starting the Neuronal Dynamics Laboratory. In 2024, he was appointed Professor of Bioengineering by the Univ. of Modena and Reggio Emilia, joining its Dept. of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences and the newly launched Master in Biomedical Engineering, contributing with his vision on Neural Engineering.