Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series - Mike Dash: "Patterned Brain Activity is the Basis for Brain Function"

Presenter: Mike Dash 

“Patterned Brain Activity is the Basis for Brain Function”

Equipped with ~86 billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, the human brain produces a remarkable array of diverse functions. Brain function is dynamic (adapting across millisecond to second timescales in response to both external and internal demands), yet stable (e.g. memories that last a lifetime). The biological basis for brain function, therefore, must share these characteristics and be able to flexibly generate distinct activity that is responsive to external stimuli and internal conditions. In this talk, I will discuss how distinct patterns of coherent brain activity across disparate brain regions serve as the biological basis for brain function. We will first explore how modern neuroscience has characterized patterns of brain activity. Then, I’ll share how research within my lab on the function of sleep and memory systems has furthered our understanding of how the rules of communication between neurons change to generate distinct patterns of brain activation and consequent function. Ultimately, we will attempt to develop a simple model to account for how the brain functions.