Ebbinghaus Empire

How the cortex may be driven to create thoughts

This talk will focus on the neural mechanisms by which the prefrontal cortex might guide the flow of thoughts, aiming to understand how coherent sequences arise internally. A computational model of cortical activity, simplified into frontal and posterior sections, is used to explore how differences in microcircuitry, such as the strength and duration of local neural attractors, influence which area dictates the progression of cognitive states. The model suggests that a more dominant prefrontal cortex, characterized by stronger and longer-lasting attractors, can effectively steer coherent sequences, potentially reflecting its role in implementing temporally organized cognitive schemata. By simulating lesions, the study also offers a potential explanation for mind-wandering and event construction deficits observed in patients with prefrontal damage.

Speaker bio: Alessandro Treves has studied at Liceo Michelangiolo, briefly at Yale and then physics in Florence, Rome and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he got his PhD with Daniel Amit in 1989, but also met Giordana and theoretical neuroscience. After a postdoc with Edmund Rolls in Oxford, he has been at SISSA since 1992, where he enjoys the collaboration of the non-hierarchical, self-organizing limbo research group. Between 2003-2022 he has been affiliated with the research center of Edvard and May-Britt Moser at NTNU, and since 2024 with that of Hanne and Tor Stensola at UiA. In 2010 he has convened the first, and so far last, Ararat Memory Meeting in Yerevan, Armenia. He has lectured and taught courses at IPM in Tehran, Al Quds University in East Jerusalem and Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, establishing there cross-disciplinary student exchange initiatives.

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Or online: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/83635437592