Modeling and Theory

SUMMARY/ABSTRACT ? Project 5.

Modeling and Theory This collaborative project will develop integrative, multi-scale models that incorporate data from all Projects in the Berghia Brain Project to describe how sensory inputs are represented and influence behavior.

It will provide data analysis and modeling frameworks in which to synthesize information gathered from connectomics analysis, behavioral analysis, and large-scale neural activity recordings. Analysis of network activity along with behavioral outputs will be reduced to hierarchical low-dimensional systems.

Novel methods will be developed to analyze connectomic data enriched with additional features including molecular information from analysis of gene expression.

Specifically, the Project aims to determine what processing is carried out by the peripheral nerve plexuses, how these may influence behavior directly, what are the computational mechanisms of this processing and how such processing interfaces with the central brain.

The three co-investigators bring complementary expertise and will interact closely with one another and with the experimental groups toward the development of an integrated model and the identification of interpretative and explanatory computational algorithms.