BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Department of Neuroscience//NONSGML Events//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://neuroscience.wustl.edu/events/ X-WR-CALDESC:Department of Neuroscience - Events BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20250623T2047Z-1750711637.8012-EO-25374-1@10.73.10.87 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTAMP:20260812T194440Z CREATED:20250623T204418Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260129T151729Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260211T120000 DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260211T130000 SUMMARY: Department of Neuroscience Seminar: Carlos Brody\, PhD (Princeton) DESCRIPTION: “Towards using large-scale\, cross-brain neuronal recordings t o identify the brain’s internal signals” Carlos Brody\, PhD Wilbur H. Gantz III ’59 Professor of Neuroscience Princeton Neuroscience Institute Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Neural activity is often analyzed wit h respect to external referents\, such as the onset of a sensory stimulus o r an overt motor action. Simultaneous […] X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

"Towards using large-scale\, cros s-brain neuronal recordings to identify the brain’s internal signals"Carlos Brody is a man with short dark hair and wearing glasses.< /strong>

Carlos Brody\, PhD
Wilbur H. Gantz I II '59 Professor of Neuroscience
Princeton Neuroscience Institute
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

Neural activity is ofte n analyzed with respect to external referents\, such as the onset of a sens ory stimulus or an overt motor action. Simultaneous recordings allow refere ncing neurons’ activity to each other and thus detecting signals that are i nternal to the organism. Further\, multi-region simultaneous recordings all ow observing how these internal signals are coordinated across the brain. F ollowing this logic in rats performing a perceptual decision-making task\, we recorded simultaneously from thousands of neurons across up to 20 brain regions at once. Here we report two internal signals which we found to prof oundly shape decision-related neural dynamics and brain states. First\, we decoded the continuously evolving decision state separately from each regio n\, and found surprisingly large magnitude co-fluctuations in these measure s. Dimensionality analysis showed these to be dominated by a single state v ariable\, suggesting that only a single decision-making computation\, not m ultiple parallel computations\, are being carried out during the analyzed p eriod. Second\, we found that the precise time the subject commits to a dec ision – a covert event that we decoded from large-scale neural activity in primary motor cortex – was accompanied by a coordinated change\, across the brain\, from a decision formation to a post-commitment state. The two stat es differ substantially in their choice-predictive neural dynamics and in t heir inter-region correlations. Therefore\, knowing the time of this state change on single trials is needed to correctly parse fundamentally differen t phases of decision-making. Overall\, our data suggest that internally-ref erenced signals and state changes\, not timelocked to external events but d etectable through simultaneous recordings\, are major features of neural ac tivity during cognition.

CATEGORIES:Seminar Series LOCATION:Neuroscience Research Building Auditorium GEO:38.635602;-90.254892 ORGANIZER;CN="Shea":MAILTO:shea.stewart@wustl.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://neuroscience.wustl.edu/events/event/department-of-neu roscience-seminar-carlos-brody/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Chicago BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0600 DTSTART:20251102T070000 TZNAME:CST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR