This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Physics of Living Systems program in the Division of Physics in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences,the Neural Systems Cluster's Organization and Modulation Programs in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems, within the Directorate for Biological Sciences, the Theory Program in the Division of Materials Research in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the Mathematical Biology program in the Division of Mathematical Sciences in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. This project is a first step towards the development of transformative theories and data analysis methods for studying the brain. In this project, the investigators will construct a theoretical framework at the interface between physics, engineering and biology that studies zero-one laws/phase transitions and related simplicities arising from having many degrees of freedom in the system. The resulting methods will be applied to both engineering examples and biological networks, particularly networks connecting neurons or brain regions. The investigators span a broad interdisciplinary spectrum ranging from theoretical physics and control theory to cell biology and neurobiology, and will engage in dissemination of the results and educating students and researchers across a broad spectrum in the subject matter of the proposal. In particular the researchers will pursue two neuroscience applications of the theoretical framework and tools developed in this proposal. The first will be directed to the analysis of experimentally determined neural circuits, and the second directed towards brain rhythms, with a focus on understanding the corresponding phase diagrams and the controllability of abnormal rhythms. They expect to recover the receptor field structure of the ganglion cells in the retina from such an analysis. These methods also will be applied to the mouse brain meso-circuit. Their analysis will go beyond graph-theoretic measures of the network and provide a bridge to activity measurements as well as to functional analysis of neuroanatomical circuitry, which is currently lacking. The investigators will also explore the consequences of the theoretical framework derived in this paper to networks of coupled, heterogeneous neural oscillators, with a distributed drive. The PIs will facilitate this impact by training researchers as well as holding meetings and workshops. The postdoc and the student will play an active role in organizing these two workshops. The PIs will publish preferentially with open access option, using funds from the grant. They will make all computer codes and secondary data analysis products available freely after publication of their results.
