Oscillations in routing and chaos

Oscillations in routing and chaos

Agostina Palmigiano

Doctoral thesis

Date of Examination: 2017-01-17

Date of issue: 2017-10-09

Advisor: Wolf, Fred Prof. Dr.

Referee: Geisel, Theo Prof. Dr.

Referee: Wilke, Melanie Prof. Dr.

Referee: Parlitz, Ulrich Prof. Dr.

Persistent Address: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1735-0000-0023-3F1C-B

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Abstract

English

The human brain is one of the most complex structures known to mankind, and arguably the most elaborate biological system that ever evolved. Studying such complex machinery whose precision and efficiency we witness in the simplest of acts, is a fascinating challenge. Neuroscience, as a historically rather young discipline, has adopted from the classical divisions of the natural sciences a wide array of experimental and theoretical approaches. A detailed account of the components, from the molecular level to the circuitry, is complemented by more abstract descriptions which aim to dissect the fundamental ingredients of neuronal dynamics. The large variety of approaches and complimentary levels of description add dimensions to the understanding of the brain and constantly reshape our view of the object of study. One among the possible perspectives, and that which was taken in this thesis, is to devote effort to studying classes of models that are broadly constrained by the statistics of the experimentally reported neuronal dynamics, and to investigate their implications on information transmission. Another possible perspective, which composes the last fraction of this work, is to dissect the elements that lead to the emergence of a certain dynamical behavior in models that allow one to make rigorous statements about their dynamics, in the hope that future research can push forward its frontiers.

Keywords: Dynamical systems; Neuronal networks; Information theory; Chaos; Oscillations