Abstract:
During active behaviors, motor actions shape sensory input and sensory processings guide future motor commands. Ongoing cycles of sensory and motor processing constitute a closed-loop feedback system which is central to motor control and, it has been argued, for perceptual processes. This closed-loop feedback is mediated by brain-wide neural circuits but how the presence of feedback signals impacts on the dynamics and function of neurons is not well understood. Here we present a simple theory suggesting that closed-loop feedback between the brain/body/environment can modulate neural gain and, consequently, change endogenous neural fluctuations and responses to sensory input. We support this theory with modeling and data analysis in two vertebrate systems. More generally we argue that our results demonstrate the dependence of neural fluctuations, across the brain, on closed-loop brain/body/environment interactions strongly supporting the idea that brain function cannot be fully understood through open-loop approaches alone.
Biography:
Taro Toyoizumi is a Lab Head at RIKEN Brain Science Institute. He received his B.S. in physics from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2001, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from the University of Tokyo in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He studied at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University as a JSPS and Patterson Trust Postdoctoral Fellow. He then came to RIKEN Brain Science Institute as a Special Postdoctoral Researcher in 2010, and was promoted to Lab Head in 2011. He has been studying the theory of neural plasticity, exploring how neural circuits self-organize in the environment. Toyoizumi has received the International Neural Network Society, Young Investigator Award in 2008 and the Commendation for Science and Technology by the MEXT Japan, Young Scientists’ Prize in 2016.
Neuroscience Seminar Series by the NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai