Leonardo Dalla Porta

P.S.: Feedback and thoughts are very welcome before the final publication. Specially if I forgot relevant work!

Altogether, our findings highlight how molecular-level heterogeneity contributes to macroscale brain function and state transitions, from wakefulness to sleep-like dynamics.

Thanks to co-authors Jan Fousek, Alain Destexhe and Mavi Sanchez-Vives. This work is a direct fruit from the HBP!

2) It boosts information flow across brain regions; and

3) Localized sleep-like slow waves can emerge within otherwise awake-like states — linking molecular and structural diversity to complex brain behavior.

In this study, we explore how regional variability in cholinergic receptor expression shapes large-scale brain dynamics. Using a biologically grounded whole-brain computational model, we show that:
1) Incorporating cholinergic heterogeneity enhances network synchronization;

Cholinergic heterogeneity facilitates synchronization and information flow in a whole-brain model The human brain displays substantial regional variability in molecular, anatomical, and physiological organization. Yet, how this heterogeneity shapes large-scale neuronal dynamics remains poorly unde...

I'm really happy to share our latest work:

“Cholinergic heterogeneity facilitates synchronization and information flow in a whole-brain model”

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I missed your above post 🤣

The missing half of the neurodynamical systems theory Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions.

Timely by Xiao-Jing Wang

Bifurcations—an underexplored concept in neuroscience—can help explain how small differences in neural circuits give rise to entirely novel functions.

www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...

Disconnecting part of the brain sends it into a deep sleep Study on the effects of surgical epilepsy treatment adds to researchers’ understanding of unconsciousness.

Disconnecting part of the brain sends it into a deep sleep

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This metaphorical illustration reimagines a hidden view of the brain of a patient with hemispherotomy. In the absence of subcortical activating inputs, the disconnected cortex defaults to a sleep-like state, marked by slow-wave EEG activity and here evocatively represented as night. By contrast, the intact hemisphere, still integrated with subcortical structures, sustains wakefulness and a bright inner world capable of environmental interaction, reflected in faster EEG rhythms. The image underscores the divergence of cortical states after hemispheric isolation. The image was created by Michele A. Colombo, the first author of the paper, through digital photo manipulation combining drawings with real neuroimaging and electrophysiological data.

#Hemispherotomy is a surgical treatment for #epilepsy by disconnecting a portion of the #cortex. Michele Colombo, Jacopo Favaro, @anilseth.bsky.social, Marcello Massimini &co show that the isolated cortex has #EEG patterns resembling deep #sleep or #anesthesia @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3J9ci8X

Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans Hemispherotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for treating refractory epilepsy by disconnecting a significant portion of the cortex. This study shows that the isolated cortex exhibits EEG patterns resem...

Have you ever wondered what is the brain activity left in a cortical hemisphere after structural isolation?

Check it out:
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Riemannian Geometry for the Classification of Brain States with Intracortical Brain Recordings Geometric machine learning is applied to decode brain states from invasive intracortical neural recordings, extending Riemannian methods to the invasive regime where data is scarcer and less stationa...

Now out in Advanced Intelligent Systems: Exploiting underlying data geometry, we classify brain states efficiently using Riemannian manifolds. A lightweight and interpretable alternative to DNNs. Spearheaded by
@arnauya.bsky.social!

Check it out: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Congrats!!!!

Brainwide hemodynamics predict EEG neural rhythms across sleep and wakefulness in humans The brain exhibits rich oscillatory dynamics that play critical roles in vigilance and cognition, such as the neural rhythms that define sleep. These rhythms continuously fluctuate, signaling major ch...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Brainwide hemodynamics predict EEG neural rhythms across sleep and wakefulness in humans | bioRxiv

Attractors are usually not mechanisms The mathematical objects can not be. And the "attractor models" have not been established as mechanisms in mammals

Attractors are usually not mechanisms - new blog post: open.substack.com/pub/kording/...

Brain networks from many animals have nonrandom structure. Including high clustering, short path lengths, heavy tailed weight distributions, and heavy-tailed degree distributions.

Are you at the @cnsorg.bsky.social conference?

Do you like networks? Brain-like networks? Pretty and structure rich networks? 🙇‍♂️🧠🕸

Come to my Poster 204 this afternoon (or anytime today)!!

The poster is right next to the coffee! ☕️ 😉

#CNS2025 #CNS2025Florence 🇮🇹🍝

Doing This Might Actually Make You Smarter You’re scrolling through TikTok with the sound off. Waiting in line for a coffee. Watching a guy try to parallel park for the third time...

Doing this might make you smarter ... (www.vice.com/en/article/d...) News coverage of our study on unsupervised learning in mice by @zhong-lin.bsky.social + @marius10p.bsky.social

#neuroscience #AI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great news Dan. All the best!!!

I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Michael Bruchas about an absolutely banger recent paper from his group that tracked down cells in the brainstem that subtlety and precisely control the output of the locus coeruleus. Check out my interview here. I hope you like it as much as I did!

I'd put these on the NeuroAI vision board:

@tyrellturing.bsky.social's Deep learning framework
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@tonyzador.bsky.social's Next-gen AI through neuroAI
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@adriendoerig.bsky.social's Neuroconnectionist framework
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧠🌡️ New preprint out!

BRAIN TEMPERATURE may be a key factor in understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease and brain cancer:

doi.org/10.31219/osf...

'Temperature matters: Insights into brain thermoregulation and its impact on neural activity and health'

Neural models for detection and classification of brain states and transitions - Communications Biology A deep learning self-supervised hybrid CNN-autoencoder model is used to detect brain states and transitions, like wakefulness, slow oscillations and microarousals, during the emergence from anesthesia...

Neural models for detection and classification of brain states and transitions
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
#neuroscience

Neural models for detection and classification of brain states and transitions Communications Biology - A deep learning self-supervised hybrid CNN-autoencoder model is used to detect brain states and transitions, like wakefulness, slow oscillations and microarousals, during...

rdcu.be/ehyfl
Finally we see our work published! w/ Arnau Manasanch, @ldallap.bsky.social and Mavi Sanchez-Vives!

Riemannian Geometry for the classification of brain states with intracortical brain-computer interfaces This study investigates the application of Riemannian geometry-based methods for brain decoding using invasive electrophysiological recordings. Although previously employed in non-invasive, the utilit...

Riemannian Geometry for the classification of brain states with intracortical brain-computer interfaces
arxiv.org/abs/2504.05534

(B–D) Behavioral task for each species. Matching pennies task for monkeys (B), dynamic foraging task for rats (C), and visual discrimination task for mice (D). (E–G) Correlation between the timescales of neural activity and anatomical hierarchy score in monkeys (E), rats (F), and mice (G). Each dot and error bar, respectively, indicate the median and SE of the timescale within each area. In (F), black and pink dots represent data from the neocortex and hippocampus, respectively. Note that the data from the hippocampus (CA3, CA1, and SUB) do not have a precise hierarchy score. In (G), black and red dots represent data from the neocortex and thalamus, respectively. Blue, green, and yellow shading indicate the regions in the visual, somatomotor, and prefrontal areas, respectively. Dashed lines denote linear regression.

Despite species and task differences, timescales of these reward history signals (as well as intrinsic timescales) follow the same pattern of cortical hierarchy across different species.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Individual variability of neural computations underlying flexible decisions - Nature Behavioural experiments to study decision-making in response to context-dependent accumulation of evidence provide testable models that are consistent with the heterogeneity in neural signatures among...

1/7 Our paper on individual variability in decision-making is finally out in @nature.com! Inspired by the classic work by Mante and Sussillo, we trained many rats to solve context-dependent decision-making, and we found that different brains use different neural mechanisms to solve the same task!

What do neural travelling waves tell us about information flow? In many behavioral conditions, neural activity propagates within and across brain regions as traveling waves, revealing the importance of analyzing spatiotemporal dynamics in electrophysiological data...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
"What do neural travelling waves tell us about information flow?"

A new preprint is out, with Antoine Grimaldi, Fredo Chavane and @martinavinck.bsky.social

Intensity versus Identity Coding in an Olfactory System We examined the encoding and decoding of odor identity and intensity by neurons in the antennal lobe and the mushroom body, first and second relays, respectively, of the locust olfactory system. Incre...

I didn't know this one!

The first manifoldian (as in a description of neural population covariance patterns) plot I am aware of is by Gilles Laurent's group www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks - Nature Nature - Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks

Trajectories in state space are shown in Figures 3 & 4 of Stable propagation of synchronous spiking in cortical neural networks (Diesmann et al, Nature, 1999).

Diana Morant: “El Centro de Neurociencias Cajal va a permitir que España dé un salto cualitativo en la investigación neurocientífica a nivel internacional” Diana Morant: “El Centro de Neurociencias Cajal va a permitir que España dé un salto cualitativo en la investigación neurocientífica a nivel internacional”

Se inaugura el Centro de Neurociencias Cajal (CNC), que englobará al @institutocajal.bsky.social y al CINC bajo el paraguas del @ci2a.bsky.social. El traslado del Instituto Cajal a sus nuevas instalaciones en Alcalá de Henares se hará en los próximos meses www.ciencia.gob.es/Noticias/202...

Spike sorting AI agent Spike sorting is a fundamental process for decoding neural activity, involving preprocessing, spike detection, feature extraction, clustering, and validation. However, conventional spike sorting metho...

Agents meet neuroscience.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...