סמינר המחלקה להנדסה ביו-רפואית ,הרצאת אורח של פרופ' יניב אסף מבית ספר סגול
The plasticity of the connectome
Prof. Yaniv Assaf
1 School of Neurobiology, biochemistry and biophysics, George S. Wise faculty of life sciences
2 Sagol School of Neuroscience
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
At every aspect of our lives – function determines structure. Just as new roads are built between developing cities, network wires are laid to adjust to faster communication demand and social networks are formed under a common goal of individuals, also the brain needs to remodel it's connectome to adapt to the daily and continuous change in functional demands.
The connectome refers to several functional and structural characteristics of brain connectivity that span from the micron level (neural circuits) to the macroscopic level (long scale pathways). This complex network (which includes the white matter but not only) is responsible for the information passage through different regions.
Without the ability to explore the connectome in-vivo, it was traditionally considered to be stable and fixed. Indeed, most effort in white matter research was invested in describing the geographical appearance of the network and the areas it connects. Yet, aside from being a wiring program, does the connectome have an active role in brain plasticity?
Diffusion MRI combined with tractography and graph analysis, allows the exploration of brain connectomics dynamics, in-vivo and on large cohorts. Assuming that the ability of the brain to absorb and store new information relays on the way it is wired, neuroplasticity must depend on connectome characteristics governed by the topology of the network. The relation between network topology and plasticity will be described in presentation
ההרצאה תתקיים ביום ראשון 17.03.2019, בשעה 14:00
בחדר 315, הבניין הרב תחומי, אוניברסיטת תל אביב
