Event
CANCELED: Booz Allen Hamilton Colloquium: "Rhythms, Routing, Resonance and Rule-Based Decisions"
Friday, May 5, 2017
3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
1110 Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Kara Stamets
301 405 4471
stametsk@umd.edu
*THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED*
Dr. Nancy Kopell
Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University
Director, Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative
Co-Director, CompNet
Title:
Rhythms, Routing, Resonance and Rule-Based Decisions
Abstract:
Cognition is highly associated with brain "rhythms", and pathology in these dynamics are hallmarks of many neurological diseases. An important function of rhythms is to facilitate coordination of signals within the brain. This talk considers the concept of "resonance" associated with brain rhythms, how such resonance helps determine the outputs of target
networks, and how resonance can be modulated. These ideas are discussed in the context of rule-based decision, i.e., behavioral choice based on context.
Bio:
Nancy Kopell is a computational neuroscientist who uses mathematical methods of analysis and simulations to reveal new principles of dynamical regulation. Kopell has helped to develop new methods in the qualitative theory of differential equations, and uses these methods and computational tools to study the dynamics of networks of neurons. She is especially interested in dynamics of the mammalian brain, including the origin and role of brain rhythms in cognition. In collaboration with multiple experimentalists, her work on this is showing that the physiology underlying the rhythms play a large role in how signals from one part of the brain are processed by the target region. Furthermore, a multitude of different brain rhythms are involved in the coordination of brain regions necessary for normal cognition. The work has led her into the study of diseases and alternate brain states (especially Parkinson's disease and anesthesia), in which normal brain rhythms are transformed and normal cognition is impossible. Kopell is a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University. She founded and directs the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, a group of about 30 labs (mostly) in the Boston area working on brain dynamics; the participants include builders of new measurement tools,
electrophysiologists working with rodents and non-human primates, those studying rhythms in human, neurosurgeons, statisticians and mathematicians. She taught previously at Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kopell received a B.A. (1963) from Cornell University and an M.A. (1965) and a Ph.D. (1967) from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Her awards include a John D. And Catherine T MacArthur Fellowship; Swartz Prize in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, Soc. for Neurosci, 2016; Mathematical Neuroscience Prize from Israel Brain Technologies, 2015. She practices tai chi and qi gong (a daoist form of standing meditation), and teaches a weekly qi gong class.
