Berlin Brains
Noise in the Head - Discharges of our nerve cells occur not only in response to signals, but also spontaneously. Does this background noise have a function?
Everything we experience, decide, and execute is mediated through electrical discharges of our nerve cells. The patterns of these electrical pulses are surprisingly strongly influenced by chance - they occur not only in response to incoming signals but also spontaneously. Where does this spontaneous variability come from? Is it good for anything? And how can information be transmitted despite the neuronal noise?
Physicist Benjamin Lindner and his doctoral student Jakob Stubenrauch research these questions in theoretical neuroscience and present some concepts and methods.
Speakers:
Prof. Dr. Benjamin Lindner, leads the Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics research group at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Humboldt University Berlin.
Jakob Stubenrauch, Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics research group at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Humboldt University Berlin.
Moderation:
Dr. Jochen Müller
Location: Zeiss-Großplanetarium