Myopic control of neural dynamics

A dynamic clamp protocol to artificially modify cell capacitance

Dynamics of excitable cells and networks depend on the membrane time constant, set by membrane resistance and capacitance. Whereas pharmacological and genetic manipulations of ionic conductances of excitable membranes are routine in electrophysiology, experimental control over capacitance remains a challenge. Here, we present capacitance clamp, an approach that allows electrophysiologists to mimic a modified capacitance in biological neurons via an unconventional application of the dynamic clamp technique. We first demonstrate the feasibility to quantitatively modulate capacitance in a mathematical neuron model and then confirm the functionality of capacitance clamp in in vitro experiments in granule cells of rodent dentate gyrus with up to threefold virtual capacitance changes. Clamping of capacitance thus constitutes a novel technique to probe and decipher mechanisms of neuronal signaling in ways that were so far inaccessible to experimental electrophysiology.

Variational Online Learning of Neural Dynamics

New technologies for recording the activity of large neural populations during complex behavior provide exciting opportunities for investigating the neural computations that underlie perception, cognition, and decision-making. Non-linear state space models provide an interpretable signal processing framework by combining an intuitive dynamical system with a probabilistic observation model, which can provide insights into neural dynamics, neural computation, and development of neural prosthetics and treatment through feedback control. This brings with it the challenge of learning both latent neural state and the underlying dynamical system because neither are known for neural systems a priori. We developed a flexible online learning framework for latent non-linear state dynamics and filtered latent states. Using the stochastic gradient variational Bayes approach, our method jointly optimizes the parameters of the non-linear dynamical system, the observation model, and the black-box recognition model. Unlike previous approaches, our framework can incorporate non-trivial distributions of observation noise and has constant time and space complexity. These features make our approach amenable to real-time applications and the potential to automate analysis and experimental design in ways that testably track and modify behavior using stimuli designed to influence learning.

Birhythmic Analog Circuit Maze: A Nonlinear Neurostimulation Testbed

Brain dynamics can exhibit narrow-band nonlinear oscillations and multistability. For a subset of disorders of consciousness and motor control, we hypothesized that some symptoms originate from the inability to spontaneously transition from one attractor to another. Using external perturbations, such as electrical pulses delivered by deep brain stimulation devices, it may be possible to induce such transition out of the pathological attractors. However, the induction of transition may be non-trivial, rendering the current open-loop stimulation strategies insufficient. In order to develop next-generation neural stimulators that can intelligently learn to induce attractor transitions, we require a platform to test the efficacy of such systems. To this end, we designed an analog circuit as a model for the multistable brain dynamics. The circuit spontaneously oscillates stably on two periods as an instantiation of a 3-dimensional continuous-time gated recurrent neural network. To discourage simple perturbation strategies, such as constant or random stimulation patterns from easily inducing transition between the stable limit cycles, we designed a state-dependent nonlinear circuit interface for external perturbation. We demonstrate the existence of nontrivial solutions to the transition problem in our circuit implementation.