Leonardo Dalla Porta

Congrats, Marco!!!

Development of structure–function coupling in human brain networks during youth | PNAS The protracted development of structural and functional brain connectivity within distributed association networks coincides with improvements in h...

Development of structure–function coupling in human brain networks during youth
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Structure–function coupling in macroscale human brain networks
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@overleaf.com Subscription overpriced; free version extremely downgraded from what it used to be.

Comparative electrophysiology of pyramidal and sparsely spiny stellate neurons of the neocortex | Journal of Neurophysiology | American Physiological Society Slices of sensorimotor and anterior cingulate cortex from guinea pigs were maintained in vitro and bathed in a normal physiological medium. Electrophysiological properties of neurons were assessed with intracellular recording techniques. Some neurons were identified morphologically by intracellular injection of the fluorescent dye Lucifer yellow CH. Three distinct neuronal classes of electrophysiological behavior were observed; these were termed regular spiking, bursting, and fast spiking. The physiological properties of neurons from sensorimotor and anterior cingulate areas did not differ significantly. Regular-spiking cells were characterized by action potentials with a mean duration of 0.80 ms at one-half amplitude, a ratio of maximum rate of spike rise to maximum rate of fall of 4.12, and a prominent afterhyperpolarization following a train of spikes. The primary slope of initial spike frequency versus injected current intensity was 241 Hz/nA. During prolonged suprathreshold current pulses the frequency of firing adapted strongly. When local synaptic pathways were activated, all cells were transiently excited and then strongly inhibited. Bursting cells were distinguished by their ability to generate endogenous, all-or-none bursts of three to five action potentials. Their properties were otherwise very similar to regular-spiking cells. The ability to generate a burst was eliminated when the membrane was depolarized to near the firing threshold with tonic current. By contrast, hyperpolarization of regular-spiking (i.e., nonbursting) cells did not uncover latent bursting tendencies. The action potentials of fast-spiking cells were much briefer (mean of 0.32 ms) than those of the other cell types.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

doi.org/10.1152/jn.1...

Neuroscience history:
Were McCormick et al. (1985) the first to coin the terms "regular" and "fast" spiking?

Comparative Electrophysiology of Pyramidal andSparsely Spiny Stellate Neurons of the Neocortex. J Neurophysiol.

2025: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience Enlightening the brain

Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike.

The 10th of these, would you believe?

This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more

Enjoy!

medium.com/the-spike/20...

This is your brain on Ritalin. Got your attention? Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) do, but not in the way you might think. They don't act directly on the brain’s attention systems! Find out what's really happening in @cellpress.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Finally got the job ad—looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year:

www.gao-unit.com/join-us/

If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply!

I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet 🏖️🌮

The next revolution in neuroscience is happening outside the lab By tracking brain activity as primates move freely in the wild, neuroethology could reshape what we think we know about our own minds.

Do we need to study animals in the wild to fully understand the brain? Maybe. OTOH, I sit in front a computer all day.
bigthink.com/neuropsych/n...
#neuroscience

New preprint out!
How does criticality propagate from local neuronal circuits to whole-brain dynamics?
We tackle this with a multiscale, connectome-based mouse model @ldallap.bsky.social . 🧵/n
👉 biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Last but not least, we extended these ideas to a multiscale, connectome-based mouse model.

"The Connectome Modulates Critical Brain Dynamics Across Local and Global Scales"

biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Check
@grabuffo.bsky.social 's thread: bsky.app/profile/grab...
1/9

Intra-and Interhemispheric Signatures of Criticality at the Onset of Synchronization The cerebral cortex must flexibly alternate between locally segregated activity that supports specialization and long-range interactions that enable integration. How cortical networks balance these co...

Check our preprint here:
biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Big thanks to all co-authors, especially
@grabuffo.bsky.social, who coordinated all the efforts together with me.
1/8

Revealing thus neuronal criticality as a dynamic, multiscale regime, shaped by interactions between near-critical populations rather than confined to isolated areas.
1/7

We show that critical dynamics emerge at the onset of synchronization both locally and globally, yet local and global criticality do not always coincide.
1/6

In our work, we take a first step toward bridging this gap by probing criticality across scales using the same neural signal: simultaneous spiking from bilateral prefrontal cortex in freely behaving rats.
1/5

This creates a major gap: how does local criticality in spiking populations correlate to large-scale criticality inferred from coarse-grained signals?

As a result, we still don’t know whether local and global criticality reflect the same dynamical regime or whether they can dissociate.
1/4

In practice, however, criticality is typically studied in isolation, either through local neuronal avalanches triggered by spikes or large-scale avalanches observed in EEG/MEG/fMRI.
(See Hengen & Shew for a recent review: doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...)
1/3

Neuronal criticality has gained traction since the seminal work of Beggs & Plenz and is now often invoked as a unifying principle of brain dynamics, spanning from local cortical circuits to whole-brain activity.
jneurosci.org/content/23/3...
1/2

Intra-and Interhemispheric Signatures of Criticality at the Onset of Synchronization The cerebral cortex must flexibly alternate between locally segregated activity that supports specialization and long-range interactions that enable integration. How cortical networks balance these co...

I am more than pleased to share our new work with you:

"Intra- and Interhemispheric Signatures of Criticality at the Onset of Synchronization"

biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Short 🧵 1/9:

Adaptive communication between cell assemblies and “reader” neurons shapes flexible brain dynamics Cell assemblies have been proposed as key units of brain activity, underlying diverse functions, but their basic features are not well understood. This study shows that interactions between cell assem...

Cell assemblies are drawing increasing attention in neuroscience, but one could argue that they are just an epiphenomenon. Is the activity of cell assemblies relevant for the brain?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is in our paper, now online at PLOS Biology. 🧵👇 1/10
doi.org/10.1371/jour...

State-dependent brain responsiveness, from local circuits to the whole brain

elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

The brain computes by processing information over time through interactions between connectivity and dynamics that are hard to model. Here we infer these interactions from data and find they better predict cognitive performance! www.nature.com/articles/s41... w/ @lindenmp.bsky.social

Cholinergic heterogeneity facilitates synchronization and information flow in a whole-brain model https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.28.685048v1

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...