Talk at the Institute of Neurobiology – “Innate development of cognitive computations and motor programs by chemoaffinity.”

Henning Sprekeler– Wednesday, February 18th, at 16:15 (CEST).

Speaker: Henning Sprekeler (Modelling of Cognitive Processes | Technical University of Berlin)

Location: Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät Lecture Hall N12, Building E, 3rd Floor

Abstract: Humans and animals are equipped with a rich innate repertoire of cognitive and behavioral skills. Yet, the developmental programs that establish the underlying neural structures are unknown. During early development, neural connectivity is often shaped by molecular programs that connect neurons based on the affinity between presynaptic receptors and postsynaptic ligands. Here, we show how such chemoaffinity-based connectivity rules can also establish cognitive computations and innate motor programs by structuring recurrent neuronal networks prior to experience. We illustrate this mechanism in computational models of low-dimensional systems of receptor-ligand pairs that establish i) continuous attractor networks for path integration with grid cell characteristics, ii) networks with an exponentially large number of discrete attractors and sequences as categorical, hierarchical or temporal sequence priors and iii) networks for arbitrary innate motor trajectories. Hence, chemoaffinity may not only shape the coarse anatomical organization of the brain, but also the innate cognitive and motor functions it performs.

Guests are cordially invited!