Download Cortical Rhythms Facilitate Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing IDDRC Seminar Series Workshop Announcement

IDDRC Seminar Series Workshop Announcement
Tuesday, December 2nd 2014 at 1:30pm
Kennedy Center, Room 901
Cortical Rhythms Facilitate
Bottom-Up and Top-Down
Processing
Nancy Kopell, Ph.D.
Boston University
Abstract:
The brain produces electrical activity in all states and all times, with ever-changing spectral properties.
Though we are beginning to learn the mechanisms of the multiple and complex "brain rhythms", it is still a
mystery how such rhythms participate in cognition. In this talk, I argue that the physiological bases of brain
rhythms (not just their frequencies) are important for cognitive function, and illustrate this with examples
concerning bottom-up and top-down processing. I also argue that modeling will be critical in understanding
how physiology is tied to function.
Biographical Note:
Dr. Nancy Kopell is a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mathematics and
Statistics at Boston University. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named an Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society
(one or two awarded worldwide each year). She has held fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Prof. Kopell is
interested in dynamics of nervous system, including the mechanistic origins of brain rhythms, their use in
cognition, and their role in cognitive disorders. She started and continues to run an NSF supported
"Discovery Network" called the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, a group of more than two dozen labs
(mostly) in the Boston area, whose mission to facilitate collaboration among theorists and experimentalists
on problems involving brain dynamics.