Biology subjects

Dabaghian, Y. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Dabaghian, Y. A..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

Spatial representability of neuronal activity

A common approach to interpreting spiking activity is based on identifying the firing fields--regions in physical or configuration spaces that elicit responses of neurons. Common examples include hippocampal place cells that fire at preferred locations in the navigated environment, head direction cells that fire at preferred orientations of the animals head, view cells that respond to preferred spots in the visual field, etc. In all these cases, firing fields were discovered empirically, by trial and error. We argue that the existence and a number of properties of the firing fields can be established theoretically, through topological analyses of the neuronal spiking activity.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Learning Orientations: a Discrete Geometry Model

In the mammalian brain, many neuronal ensembles are involved in representing spatial structure of the environment. In particular, there exist cells that encode the animals location and cells that encode head direction. A number of studies have addressed properties of the spatial maps produced by these two populations of neurons, mainly by establishing correlations between their spiking parameters and geometric characteristics of the animals environments. The question remains however, how the brain may intrinsically combine the direction and the location information into a unified spatial framework that enables animals orientation. Below we propose a model of such a framework, using ideas and constructs from algebraic topology and synthetic affine geometry.

neuroscience↗