Desde el grupo de Física Estadística y de los Sistemas Complejos tenemos les invitamos a asistir a nuestro próximo seminario: Ponente: Pablo Villegas Góngora. Universidad de Granada. Título: The statistical mechanics of cortical asynchronous states Resumen: Cortical networks are shaped by the combined action of excitatory and inhibitory interactions. We elucidate a general noise-induced effect that we call “Jensen’s force” –stemming from the combined effect of excitation/inhibition balance and network sparsity– which is responsible for generating a phase of self-sustained low activity in excitation-inhibition networks. The uncovered phase reproduces all key empirically-observed features of cortical networks in the so-called asynchronous state, characterized by low, un-correlated and highly-irregular activity. Through a parsimonious model we resolve a number of long-standing issues, such as proving that activity can be arbitrarily low, but still self-sustained even in the complete absence of external stimuli or driving. This approach opens new avenues for theoretical and conceptual understanding of the phases and phase transitions of actual neural networks, from a broad statistical-mechanics perspective, with the aim to elucidate how the cortex processes information and computes. Lugar: Seminario de Física Computacional (aula F1). Departamento de Física de la Materia. Facultad de Ciencias. Fecha y hora: Jueves 29 de Noviembre. 12:00. Más información: https://ic1.ugr.es/eventos/wp/seminariosinternos16/ <https://ic1.ugr.es/eventos/wp/seminariosinternos16/> Atentamente, --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel Manzano Electromagnetism and Condensed Matter Department University of Granada Facultad de Ciencias, Av. Fuentenueva s/n Granada 18071, Spain Phone: +34 958241000  Ext: 20569 <tel:+34%20958241000;20569> http://ic1.ugr.es/manzano/ <http://ic1.ugr.es/manzano/>