The STOICISM project aimed to model and quantify the communication inside microcortical columns by modelling the multi-scale neuronal activity from intracellular signalling, synaptic channel, and cortical microcolumns. STOICISM investigated an computational platform that models and analyses the multi-scale neuronal behaviours and long-term synaptic dynamics using information and communication theory. In addition to the scientific impact, this project explored an excellent set of tools and knowledge to widen and deepen the applicant’s expertise on computational neuroscience. This project combined the researcher’s experience, the host institution’s biophysical computational, in-vitro models and, lastly, emerging data and concepts from the neuroscience community. The developed platform will enable a further understanding of cortical microcolumns’ plasticity dynamics, and will contribute to large-scale brain projects by proposing a new method of analysing their neurological models and data. The role of astrocytes inside cortical microcolumns will also be further understood, and its impact on synaptic plasticity dynamics. This whole framework bridges the gap between resources and hypothesis testing through an extensive analysis of the long-term plasticity dynamics in neurons and astrocytes and their effects in cortical microcolumns. In this project, we used multi-scale modelling (computer science), neurological modelling (neuroscience) and information theory (communications engineering).
Based on the rationale previously introduced, we seek to address the following research questions: Can the multi-scale cortical microcolumns communication model be used to uncover hidden behavior of the cortical microcolumn and explain unknown physiological behavior? How is this heterogeneous communication environment affected by dynamic plasticity variation?
