Center for Brain and Cognition - Theoretical Neuroscience Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra / ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

Date: Wed 25 June 2025 -- 1 PM (GMT-3)

Live Streaming: https://www.youtube.com/ExactasUNCPBA/live

Language of the talk: Spanish

Abstract: Finding precise signatures of different brain states is a central, unsolved question in neuroscience. The difference in brain state can be described as differences in the detailed causal interactions found in the underlying intrinsic brain dynamics. We use a Thermodynamics framework to quantify the breaking of the detailed balance captured by the level of asymmetry in temporal processing, i.e. the arrow of time. We also formulate a novel whole-brain model paradigm allowing us to derive the generative underlying mechanisms for changing the arrow of time between brain regions in different conditions. We found precise, distinguishing signatures in terms of the reversibility and hierarchy of large-scale dynamics in three radically different brain states (cognition, rest, deep sleep and anaesthesia) in fMRI and electrocorticography data from human and non-human primates. Overall, this provides signatures of the breaking of detailed balance in different brain states, reflecting different levels of computation.

BIO: Gustavo Deco is a Research Professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and a Full Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where he leads the Computational Neuroscience Group. He was also Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition from 2001 to 2021 (UPF). In 1987, he received his PhD in Physics for his thesis on Relativistic Atomic Collisions. In 1987, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Bordeaux, France. From 1988 to 1990, he held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Giessen, Germany. From 1990 to 2003, he led the Computational Neuroscience Group at the Siemens Corporate Research Center in Munich, Germany. In 1997, he obtained his Habilitation (the highest academic degree in Germany) in Computer Science (Dr. rer. nat. habil.) from the Technical University of Munich for his thesis on neural learning. In 2001, he received his PhD in Psychology from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. In 2012, he received a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Fellowship and, most recently, an ERC Synergy Fellowship in 2022.

Further information: https://neuro-ai-lab.intia.exa.unicen.edu.ar/eins-seminars

Regards,

Jose A. Fernandez-Leon Fellenz