Past events: Andrea Alamia. The role of oscillatory traveling waves in cognition: a predictive coding perspective

What: The role of oscillatory traveling waves in cognition: a predictive coding perspective.

Where: BCBL Auditorium and zoom room # 2 (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Andrea Alamia, PhD, UMR5549 Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CerCo) Toulouse, France

When:  Tuesday,  Nov 28th at 12:00 PM noon.

In recent years predictive coding has emerged as a key paradigm for investigating the computational mechanisms involved in brain functioning. However, its neural correlates remain unclear. This talk will explore the relationship between oscillatory traveling waves and predictive coding processes. In the first part, I will show how a simple 2-level predictive coding model gives rise to alpha-band rhythms when considering physiological communication delays between levels in the system. Next, I will show how a multi-level version of the same model generates oscillatory traveling waves, propagating feedforward (during visual stimulation) and backward (during rest). In the second part of the talk, I will present two experimental studies corroborating the hypothesis that traveling waves reflect Predictive Coding processes: the first study reveals the effects of the psychedelics drug, N,N, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) on traveling waves, whereas the second study investigates differences between schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects. Lastly, I will present one study exploring how covert visual attention distinctly modulates forward and backward alpha-band traveling waves.