Project description
Anticipated synchronisation for closed-loop neural information flow and nature-inspired AI
Information flow in the brain involves both feedforward and feedback activity. For example, the early sensory cortex (SC) receives feedforward sensory input from the environment and feedback from the higher-level prefrontal cortex (PFC). Low-frequency oscillations are a hallmark of coupling. While sensory input and PFC have their own temporal dynamics, current models suggest that the early SC decouples from the sensory input when receiving feedback from the PFC, eliminating the potential for multi-area processing. The European Research Council-funded BACK2FUTURE project will apply the idea of anticipated synchronisation from dynamical systems theory to enable simultaneous coupling to both sensory input and PFC, and aims to find the biophysical substrates.
Objective
Our brain processes multitudes of signals based on recurrent network activity involving feedforward and feedback interarea communication. To funnel information efficiently between areas, low-frequency rhythmic neural activity patterns couple to each other. It is an unresolved question how early sensory cortex (SC) can couple efficiently to both feedforward sensory information flow and feedback information flow arriving from higher order regions such as prefrontal cortex (PFC). Since PFC and sensory input lack direct coupling and operate with their own temporal dynamics, SC decouples from the sensory input when PFC couples to SC. It is therefore not possible to achieve efficient multi-area coupling in currently proposed feedback-driven coupling schemes. In search of a mechanism to address this problem I resort to a dynamical systems process called anticipated synchronization (AS). During AS, a receiving system (PFC) sends a copy of its own activity as delayed feedback to itself, allowing this system to - paradoxically - anticipate the dynamics of the driving system (SC). During AS, information from PFC is sent back to SC arriving at the right time in the future, while SC maintains sensory coupling. My goal in the next 5 years is to provide evidence of interarea AS coupling by creating a biophysical model of AS, empirically testing its predictions using ECoG data, psychophysics and EEG. By validating the use of tACS to control coupling, I will experimentally induce AS in a new closed-loop set-up that stimulates PFC with its own delayed activity. The proposed research will settle a critical theoretical debate on temporal coordination of interarea brain communication and will provide the computational basis for the hitherto unexplained excess of local feedback loops in the brain. The findings will inform new closed-loop treatment approaches and can improve biologically-inspired artificial intelligent systems that currently disregard the exact timing of information flow.
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands