Mind-Brain Lecture: Michael W. Cole (Rutgers)
Location: Bernstein Center for Computional Neuroscience, Berlin --> How the get there
The human brain is remarkably flexible, allowing rapid learning of a virtually infinite variety of possible tasks. Consider for instance the common proficiency of healthy adults at using complex new technologies (e.g., computers, smartphones), demonstrating the human brain’s ability to rapidly reconfigure to a variety of possible novel task states. A potential neural mechanism underlying such rapid instructed task learning may involve ‘flexible hubs’ – a set of fronto-parietal regions with brain-wide connectivity that changes according to task demands. These shifts in functional connectivity likely help coordinate the spatially disparate processes involved in task performance (e.g., processes in visual and motor regions during a novel visuo-motor task). We have recently demonstrated multiple neural mechanisms involving flexible hubs. These mechanisms were identified using resting-state functional connectivity with fMRI to identify cognitive control network organization, task-evoked functional connectivity to observe dynamic network reorganization, and multivariate pattern analysis to decode task information. Together these findings support a flexible hub theory of cognitive control and provide impetus for further development and testing of this theoretical framework in both basic and clinical science contexts.
Michael W. Cole, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University-Newark
http://www.colelab.org
All are welcome!
