How the Brain Processes Big Data

Abstract

We continuously observe our surroundings through our senses. This enormous amount of incoming information needs to be processed by the brain – consisting of dense networks of massively interconnected neurons – in a meaningful way. Channeling the flow of information through these dense networks is influenced by the behavioral context in which the information arrives. In this talk I will describe the mechanism that we found to be elementary to information routing in the brain. I will also use this study to highlight the enormous potential of data science for neuroscience – and the gap we still need to bridge.


About the Speaker

Iris Grothe obtained a BSc. degree in 2005 in Medical Biology, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Already then, she got interested in systems neuroscience: trying to understand how the brain does what it does. She started investigating signal routing in the brain and obtained her MSc. degree in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2007, also in Nijmegen. She moved to Bremen where she got trained in large scale electrophysiology in the Cognitive Neurophysiology lab headed by Prof. Andreas Kreiter and obtained her PhD there. She also was a member of the Bernstein Group of Computational Neurosciences in Bremen. Subsequently she moved to Frankfurt, where she spent several years as a PostDoc at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with the Max Planck Society where she was investigating the brain with optogenetic techniques.

Iris moved back to Bremen last year and currently is a staff scientist in the Cognitive Neurophysiology lab at the University of Bremen. Her research interests are neurophysiology, signal routing in neuronal networks, oscillatory neuronal networks, dynamics in the brain, systems neuroscience, optogenetics, vision science and selective attention.

Speaker:
Dr. Iris Grothe