Description:

The Department of Neuroscience welcomes Dr. Erin Rich, Assistant Professor, with Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to the 2021/2022 seminar series.

Abstract

Populations of interacting neurons produce complex dynamics critical for generating thought and behavior. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work investigating the rich dynamics of population activity in the prefrontal cortex. Our ongoing studies focus on neural dynamics in the orbitofrontal cortex that underlie reward expectations and value-based decision-making, and in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that contribute to mnemonic strategies in working memory. Across these different tasks, neural populations reveal how cognitive processes evolve, and how relevant information is structured and restructured to meet task demands. Together, our findings demonstrate that population dynamics provide important insights into neural mechanisms of cognition that are poorly captured by examining single neurons in isolation.