Beyond optimality to understanding individual brains: variability, homeostasis and compensation in neuronal circuits
-
1
Brandeis University, United States
I will summarize recent theoretical and experimental work that shows that similar circuit outputs can be produced with highly variable circuit parameters. This work argues that the nervous system of each healthy individual has found a set of different solutions that give "good enough circuit performance. I will use examples from theoretical and experimental studies using the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system to argue that synaptic and intrinsic currents can vary far more than the output of the circuit in which they are found. These data have significant implications for the mechanisms that maintain stable function over the animal’s lifetime, and for the kinds of changes that allow the nervous system to recover function after injury. In this kind of complex system, merely collecting mean data from many individuals can lead to significant errors, and it becomes important to measure as many individual network parameters in each individual as possible.
Conference:
Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010, Salt Lake City, UT, United States, 25 Feb - 2 Mar, 2010.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Oral presentations
Citation:
Marder
E
(2010). Beyond optimality to understanding individual brains: variability, homeostasis and compensation in neuronal circuits.
Front. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2010.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.03.00008
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
17 Feb 2010;
Published Online:
17 Feb 2010.
*
Correspondence:
Eve Marder, Brandeis University, Waltham, United States, marder@brandeis.edu