András Ecker

Neuroscience PhD at the @BlueBrainPjt, here to lurk around computational neuroscience and machine learning...

[PLOS Biology @PLOSBiology]

@DiamantakiMaria & @NassiPapoutsi explore the
@BlueBrainPjt study in #PLOSBiology that describes a biological model of the rodent CA1 region, building an accessible tool for the whole #hippocampus community. Primer: https://t.co/XE06quusVS Paper: https://t.co/wcFjjaSxW8

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

Please make some noise to the cool high-order structure - function work of my (mostly) twitterles colleagues. I think it's super relevant to modelers using simplified (even distance dependent) connectomes as it shows what one looses with such an approach.

[EPFL Blue Brain Project @BlueBrainPjt]

📢Preprint alert! Our latest manuscript, "Efficiency and reliability in biological neural network architectures" was just shared on BiorXiv, go check it out!

https://t.co/RXMsx0f4U0

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

Happy to see this out! Shout-out to reviewers, you've actually made this paper better!
Three more publications are coming using similar methods delving into the link between high-order cortical structure and function.

[EPFL Blue Brain Project @BlueBrainPjt]

📢New Publication Alert! Our paper "Cortical cell assemblies and their underlying connectivity: An in silico study" is out in @PLOSCompBiol.
We plunge into the world of cortical connectivity to understand the formation of functional cell assemblies.
👉https://t.co/rL6dKamQi5

[Steeve Laquitaine, PhD @sl_neuro]

Flying to @CosyneMeeting, my favorite #CompNeuro conf! Come to poster 1-126 the 29th. Big thanks to #Cosyne2024 reviewers for helping improve the study. We test new spike sorters, new datasets, use neurogeometry to measure sorting-induced loss in stimulus discrimination capacity.

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@srikipedia thanks Srikanth!

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

I'm a Dr. now! Alongside the rules governing plastic changes I also learned how to fail and start over again and again... Will never forget that!

[EPFL Blue Brain Project @BlueBrainPjt]

Congratulations to Blue Brain's Dr. @andris_ecker!
András successfully defended his thesis Principles of Network Plasticity in Neocortical Microcircuits 🍾
Amazing job!

#Neuroscience #SimulationNeuroscience

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

And there I am, getting excited about the plasticity of cross-assembly synapses (i.e., strengthening of the phase sequence) in my "just a model"...
https://t.co/rQYyFK1i4F

[Adrien Peyrache 🪐😴⚡️ @apeyrache]

🚨New paper from the lab!🚨

Since Hebb, we know that precise sequences of neuronal firing must be the backbone of computation in the brain. For long, we’ve believed it must be related to connectivity, right? And what if it was not (entirely)?

Preprint👇
https://t.co/fTRXrbhxUq

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

Thanks to @james_isbister, @NeuralEnsemble, @kmaccio and a bunch of twitterless co-authors!

If you don't have time to read, come to my poster at the #BernsteinConference.

The plastic circuit, like all recent models of the @BlueBrainPjt, is open source: https://t.co/zrPaUtsWcC

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

Bottom-up modeling offers the allure of assembling well-constructed components, yielding remarkable outcomes sans extensive parameter tweaking. Our recent cortical plasticity preprint showcases this, revealing sparse changes in an in vivo-like state:
https://t.co/rQYyFK1i4F

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

We modeled 312M plastic synapses and observed only 5% of them changing in 10 minutes of biological time. The network remained stable w/o any homeostatic terms. Synapses that changed were likely to be between cell assemblies and in spatial clusters on postsynaptic dendrites.

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

Doing a PhD is not hard, neither is writing a thesis! What's hard is organizing a committee, finding a time slot for the defense and getting everyone's signature during the summer...

[Steeve Laquitaine, PhD @sl_neuro]

@CNSorg: Come see our detailed ground truth model of #neuropixels #ephys recordings with #kilosort 3 spike sorting. We build on the work from @marius10p, @SteinmetzNeuro, @computingnature et al. Our model captures lots of biological variability in the cortex. Feedbacks welcome !

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@cian_neuro @ldallap1 @jorgefmejias @Timothy0Leary I think one possible way of doing it is to look for emergent features that you didn't put in in the first place. But I'm 100% with you, one can never be sure...

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@cian_neuro @ldallap1 @jorgefmejias @Timothy0Leary Both (top-down and bottom-up) approaches are valid (and used in other fields of science) and hopefully they'll converge at some point.
Also: we finally cleaned up our whole infrastructure and open sourced the model so people can judge it themselves after trying it out.

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@cian_neuro @ldallap1 @jorgefmejias @Timothy0Leary "Physics has done fine without modelling everything in the entire universe" Sure and we're not using the Schrödinger equation to build skyscrapers because there are more abstract models that work for that...

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@kendmil @Timothy0Leary E.g here I used the model to study the connectivity of cell assemblies: https://t.co/c7iyGYCiLO which (among many other things) one cannot do experimentally.

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

@kendmil @Timothy0Leary "But in neuroscience, where there are a zillion unknown uncontrolled parameters, ... ?"
That's the good thing about the in silico nature of the study: part of those zillion parameters that we actually modeled are fully observable and controllable

[András Ecker @andris_ecker]

After 8 and 9 years of building these models the preprints came out on the same day. They're also the first ones from the Blue Brain that you can run yourself (with a big enough computer)!

[EPFL Blue Brain Project @BlueBrainPjt]

📢#PreprintAlert Our state-of-the-art models of rat somatosensory cortex https://t.co/NldqwHwIiS and hippocampus CA1 https://t.co/WHoGd2df3x are out! These atlas-based, biophysically detailed models exhibit in vitro and in vivo-like activity and replicate laboratory experiments.

[Alberto Antonietti - @[email protected] @_AAlpha]

Come work with me! 😊 #neurojob #neurotwitter #postdocposition #postdocjobs