Decoding Brain Circuits & Cracking the Neural Code: Understanding Perception, Memory, Mood & Thought

How do we perceive? Acquire new skills? Recall past events? Recognize familiar faces? Guide our everyday decisions based on our past experience? How and why does our mood affects these decisions? How do neurological and psychiatric diseases alter these functions?

These are amongst the deepest and most complex questions that the field of Neuroscience seeks to answer. Whereas ongoing research is revealing which parts of the brain participate in several of these functions, the next frontier lies in understanding the elusive neural code and the nature of the neural operations occurring in brain circuits.

Moreover, individual brain cells and circuits constantly adapt during our everyday experience: How does this plasticity underlie the stunning ability of the brain to learn? Neuroscientist Prof. Béïque and neurophysicist Prof. Longtin will outline some of the current theories and discoveries that are shaping our still rudimentary understanding of how brain circuits create our ability to dynamically and purposefully interact with the outside world.Prof. Naud will outline some of the current theories and discoveries that are shaping our still rudimentary understanding of how brain circuits create our ability to dynamically and purposefully interact with the outside world.