We are proud to host a special seminar by Dr. Joao Barbosa from the Neuromodulation Institute & Neurospin, Paris!
Title: Region-specific transformations enable distributed computations of flexible decisions
Date: Thursday, December 11th
Time: 12:00 p.m.
Location: Fotakis Room
Abstract
Cognitive flexibility is thought to rely on control from the prefrontal cortex, yet recent evidence suggests that information for flexible decisions is widely distributed across multiple brain regions. Dr. Barbosa will tackle this complexity by analyzing the dynamics within and between six brain regions in a context-dependent decision-making task. Using population analyses and data-constrained Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), his work reveals that despite task variables being broadly encoded, each region performs different computations during flexible decision making. This work moves beyond classical decoding to show how progressive, abstract transformations enable complex behavior.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Joao Barbosa is a Group Leader at the Neuromodulation Institute (INM) and NeuroSpin in Paris. For over a decade, his research has focused on building biologically grounded models of cognition using electrophysiology from various species. His group utilizes interpretable machine-learning methods, particularly neurally constrained, low-rank RNNs, to infer how information flows across brain regions. Central to his work is the analysis of neural geometry—examining low-dimensional dynamics and manifolds of population activity—to reveal distributed architectures and causal network mechanisms underlying behavioral flexibility.
Further information on Dr. Barbosa’s work can be found here.
