NONRANDOM CIRCUITS

Origin and function of nonrandom cortical connectivities

Coordinatore	INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE (INSERM)    more  Organization address address: 101 Rue de Tolbiac city: PARIS postcode: 75654 contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Laurie Cognome: Louis-Joseph Email: send email Telefono: +33 1 45 17 29 32 Fax: +33 1 45 17 29 11
Nazionalità Coordinatore	France [FR]
Totale costo	193˙594 €
EC contributo	193˙594 €
Programma	FP7-PEOPLE Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)
Code Call	FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
Funding Scheme	MC-IEF
Anno di inizio	2013
Periodo (anno-mese-giorno)	2013-01-01   -   2014-12-31

 Partecipanti

#	participant	country	role	EC contrib. [€]
1	INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE (INSERM)  Organization address address: 101 Rue de Tolbiac city: PARIS postcode: 75654 contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Laurie Cognome: Louis-Joseph Email: send email Telefono: +33 1 45 17 29 32 Fax: +33 1 45 17 29 11	FR (PARIS)	coordinator	193˙594.80
2	CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE  Organization address address: Rue Michel -Ange 3 city: PARIS postcode: 75794 contact info Titolo: Ms. Nome: Chiara Cognome: Chelini Email: send email Telefono: +33 1 49 60 49 35 Fax: +33 1 49 60 41 46	FR (PARIS)	participant	0.00

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Recent neurophysiological experiments have revealed the existence of nonrandom connectivity patterns in the cortex of rats. These patterns consist of certain connectivity structures that appear more often than one would expect if neurons were randomly connected. An example of such departure from randomness is the prevalence of pairs of neurons reciprocally connected. Another example is the overrepresentation of certain connectivity patterns involving three or more neurons connected through strong synapses. It is currently unknown how these nontrivial connectivity patterns arise, and what function they serve. The goal of this project is to study, using analytical and numerical techniques, the emergence of these connectivity patterns, and to elucidate the possible function of nonrandom circuits. We will explore the hypothesis that these patterns naturally result from the interplay between the ongoing cortical activity and the synaptic modifications induced by correlated neuronal activity. In particular, we will determine the conditions necessary for the formation of the nonrandom structures observed in experiments, studying how the rule governing synaptic changes and the input statistics determine the emergent connectivity structure. In a second stage, we will investigate the impact of nonrandom connectivities in the dynamics of cortical circuits, emphasizing the consequences for the stability of self-sustained activity patterns (attractors). Finally, we will concentrate on the distribution of synaptic weights seen in experiments, consisting in a large fraction of silent synapses coexisting with a small fraction of functional synapses whose weights are log-normally distributed. Using analytical tools developed in statistical physics, we will compute the distribution of synaptic weights that maximizes the number of attractors sustained by the cortical circuit, and we will assess whether the distribution measured in the cortex agrees with the optimal distribution.'