Rutgers Network Neuroscience Interest Group: Maria Grazia Puxeddu, PhD (Virginia Tech)
“Linking network architecture to function and behavior across scales: from human brain dynamics to Drosophila circuits”
Speaker: Maria Grazia Puxeddu, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Neuroscience
Virginia Tech
Date and Time: Friday, June 26, at 1:00 PM
Zoom: https://rutgers.zoom.us/my/lp756?pwd=Y3Q1NTNGTFJibHpYcUUwYUNaaFg5UT09
In-Person: SRB seminar room
Summary: Network neuroscience has been highly successful in describing brain organization in terms of modules, hubs, and pathways. Its next challenge is explanatory: understanding how the described architecture underlies brain function, behavior, and disease. In this talk, I will present two lines of work that address this challenge at different scales. The first uses multivariate information theory to define brain modules through patterns of higher order redundant and synergistic interactions. This framework reveals how the balance between within-module redundancy and between-module synergy reorganizes across the human lifespan and, in ongoing work, across the progression of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The second turns to the Drosophila brain, where circuit architecture, neural activity, and behavior can all be measured directly. I will describe ongoing work characterizing the network role of distinct thermosensory neurons and how it can be used to predict neural function and behavior. Together, these projects suggest that network architecture, more than the conventional classification of brain regions and neurons into systems and cell types, provides a fundamental substrate for understanding brain function, behavior, and their disruption in disease.
