| Schaffer Evan |
| Email |
ess2129 columbia.edu |
| Gender |
Male |
| Nationality |
United States Of America |
| Year of birth |
1983 |
| Department |
Neurobiology and Behavior |
| University |
Columbia University |
| Country (of work) |
United States Of America |
| Simulation Project Title |
Development of Connectivity Specific versus random wiring. |
| Type of model |
Mathematical analysis network |
| Description |
Given a complete map of cortical connectivity, an interesting question is whether it could
arise by randomly sampling from an appropriate distribution, or instead whether more precise
wiring is necessary. Specific wiring of this sort could arise from genetic specification or
from activity-dependent plasticity. I propose to develop models that construct networks
pseudo-randomly from realistic distributions, and compare their structure to
anatomical-circuit data (see below). |
| Why complementary |
Neural network dynamics provide a link between neural architecture and complex behavior.
As a rotation project, I have analyzed data on the large-scale patterns of connectivity in
cortical slices. My thesis plan is to explore such issues as signal propagation, stability,
and learning in biologically realistic neural networks. My proposed project gets at the
tangential but interesting question of how precisely synapse-formation is directed rather than
random during development. |
| Tutor |
Alex Roxin |