Self-Organization of Cortical Structure and Function The primary focus of this project is how neuroanatomical structures self-organize into functioning neuronal networks, the range of mechanisms required to explain this self-organizing capability, and the behaviors of the developed networks. A central hypothesis of this work is that the development of the three-dimensional structure of neurons under the influence of volume signals (Montague et al., 1991; Montague and Sejnowski, forthcoming) is a fundamental determinant of the information processing properties of neural circuits. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, we have developed large scale computational simulators of neural development that explicitly model the three-dimensional structure of neural tissue. Our current work is aimed at extending these tools by incorporating empirically-derived dendritic data into the simulator to serve as developing postsynaptic structures. As postsynaptic structures are the source of volume signals, this suggests that their spatial configuration will be of central importance in determining the representational properties of neural circuits. Through the use of large-scale models, we will be able to address the relation between the self-organization of cortical structure and the development of cortical function.
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