Talk: Neural coding for flexible behavior in prefrontal cortex

10 October 2023

Colloquium by Dr. Erin Rich, Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York

Abstract:
Cognitive processes depend on the collective activity of populations of neurons. Together, interacting neurons produce complex dynamics that may reveal key mechanisms linking neuron firing to thought and behavior. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work investigating the rich dynamics of population activity in the prefrontal cortex. Across different tasks requiring evaluation, value-based decision-making, and working memory, neural populations reveal how cognitive processes evolve and how relevant information is structured and restructured to meet task demands. Together, these studies illustrate how population dynamics can provide important insights into neural mechanisms of cognition that are poorly captured by examining single neurons in isolation.

Erin Rich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Friedman Brain Institute, which she joined in 2017. Her work focuses on the neural basis of cognitive and affective processing. She and her team utilize behavioral and neurophysiological approaches to study how rewards and punishments influence cognitive processes such as learning, memory and decision- making. Erin Rich received a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University, an MD and PhD in Neuroscience from Mount Sinai School of Medicine under the Medical Scientist Training Program. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She received various prizes and awards, the most recent being the FBI Research Scholars Award from the Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2019, the NARSAD Young Research Investigator Grant from Brain and Behavior Research Foundation in 2019 and for Circuit mechanisms of self-organized cognitive strategies from NIH/NIMH in 2020.

We organise the present talk as a an online lecture (Zoom details will follow). Credit Points can be obtained as usual as long as you participate for the whole duration of the talk.

Date and time: 10.10.2023 15:00, Zoom meeting