[CTN] Upcoming Seminar - William Lytton (SUNY Downstate) - Neurons and synapses working together happily in brain health; not so happily in brain disease

[Sue Ann Campbell]

Hello Everyone,

Just passing along information about this Applied Math seminar which may be of interest.

Regards,

Sue Ann

Date: Tuesday, June 10, 9:30 a.m.

Place: MC 5501
(5th floor of MC. After exiting elevator follow signs for Colloquium Rooms)

Speaker: Prof. William Lytton, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University

Title: Neurons and synapses working together happily in brain health; not so happily in brain disease

Abstract:
At first approximation, we currently think of the brain as a set of neurons as nodes connected by directed edges, akin to the mathematical description of an Erdős–Rényi graph model. It is now time to redirect attention on the individual neurons, the massive complex entities that are often a locus of disease progression and may also be an additional locus of computation. I will focus on the role of the cortical corticospinal cell in Parkinson's disease (PD) and in migraine/ischemia. In both cases a class of neuron becomes damaged as an effect of disease: the effect becomes a site for the burgeoning disorder.

More generally, I wish to refocus on cell physiology as a basis of brain function. This will help us to better explain how cell pathology produces dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and mild cognitive impairment. The roles played by particular neuron types in performing the computations that underlie brain function will provide a new Neuron-based Computational Theory (NCT) to complement and augment the current dominant Synapse-based Computational Theory (SCT), which gave us Hebbian/Hopfieldian cell assemblies reified in modern large-language models (LLMs).




_______________________________________________


Dr. Sue Ann Campbell (she/her)

Professor and University Research Chair

Department of Applied Mathematics & Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience<https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-theoretical-neuroscience/>

Associate Dean, Research, Faculty of Mathematics

University of Waterloo

Waterloo ON N2L 3G1

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~sacampbe/

President, Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society<https://caims.ca/>


I acknowledge that I live and work on the traditional territory of the Chonnonton, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo main campus is located on the Haldimand tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. Our active work toward reconciliation takes place across our campuses through research, learning, teaching, and community building, and is co-ordinated within the Office of Indigenous Relations.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/ctn/attachments/20250602/16fd6f36/attachment.htm>