Neurons with multiple personalities: multistability in neurodynamics
Gennady Cymbalyuk, Ph.D.
The Neuroscience Institute
Georgia State University
Host: Boris Prilutsky
Time: noon-1pm Wednesday, September 9
Location: Student Center, room 320
Abstract:
The talk will be focused on the co-existence of different stable regimes of activity in individual neurons (so-called multistability). Such multistability enhances potential flexibility of the nervous system and has many implications for motor control, dynamical memory, information processing, and decision making. I will identify different scenarios leading to multistability in the neuronal dynamics and discuss its potential roles in the operation of the central nervous system under normal and pathological conditions. Multistability has been studied combining theoretical and experimental approaches since the pioneering works by Rinzel, 1978 and Guttman et al., 1980. It is intensively studied on different levels. On the cellular level, multistability is the co-existence of basic regimes like bursting, spiking, sub-threshold oscillations and silence. On the network level, examples of multistability include the co-existence of different synchronization modes, “on” and “off” states, and polyrhythmic bursting patterns.