Columbia University in the City of New York

Feb 6, 20183:00 pm
Seminar

Cognitive Coding in the Hippocampal-entorhinal System

Featuring Christian Doeller, PhD, Director of the Braathen-Kavli Centre at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Professor of Medicine & Neuroscience at NTNU; Principal Investigator, the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.

February 6th, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm at the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th floor lecture hall)

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The fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience — what are the key neural coding principles underlying higher-level cognition in humans — still remains largely unanswered. In Christian Doeller's long-term attempt to tackle this question, he uses human memory and the neural population code for space as a model system. He will present evidence from fMRI, MEG and virtual reality experiments for cognitive coding mechanisms in the hippocampal-entorhinal system, such as continuous coding of virtual, mentally simulated, conceptual and visual space, hierarchical scaling of memories, mnemonic convergence and attractor-based integration. Finally, he will provide evidence for an early breakdown of the entorhinal system in a genetic model of Alzheimer’s disease. Identifying neural metrics of cognition could open up the possibility for new technology to enhance cognition as well as for novel biomarkers for an early detection of neurodegenerative diseases.

Christian Doeller is currently Director of the Braathen-Kavli Centre at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Professor of Medicine & Neuroscience at NTNU Trondheim, Norway and Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Doeller received his undergraduate training in psychology and computer science at several German Universities (Würzburg, Humboldt University Berlin and Bonn), including research and clinical traineeships at Max-Planck Institutes in Munich and Leipzig and at the Department of Epileptology at University Hospital Bonn. After finishing his PhD in cognitive neuroscience with Axel Mecklinger in Saarbrücken, he worked as a Research Fellow with Neil Burgess at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, UK, before being appointed as Principal Investigator and Associate Professor at the Donders Institute

 

Faculty Host: Joshua Jacobs, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University

Registration is strongly encouraged. Seating is limited.

For questions about the lecture, please contact [email protected].

Those who wish to meet the speaker during the visit should contact Joshua Jacobs.

This seminar is part of the Systems, Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Seminar Series at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, which focuses on cognition and decision making research. Internationally renowned speakers present their recent work on these topics using behavioral, neurobiological and computational approaches. Seminars take place approximately every other week on Tuesdays at 4 pm in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th floor).

Venue: the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th floor lecture hall)
3227 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

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