Trial lecture
The candidate will first give a trial lecture on the following topic: 'A single neuron’s value – what does modern neuroscience tell us about coding principles in the cortex?'
Main research findings
The brain is thought to build a cognitive map of both physical and abstract spaces, helping us navigate the world, organize knowledge, and form new memories. In this thesis, I investigated key brain subregions to uncover the principles underlying the emergence of neural representations. I focused on the general properties of the neural code, how visual inputs are integrated, and how these representations reorganize through learning. To address these questions, I combined large-scale chronic two-photon calcium imaging in mice with normative modeling in artificial neural networks.
We show that neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) develop task-relevant tuning during learning of a purely visual association task, pointing to a broader role beyond its classical link to spatial coding. In parallel, selective disruption of specific neuron types in the postrhinal cortex (POR) impaired learning of the same task, demonstrating their causal contribution. Furthermore, using artificial neural networks, we uncovered computational principles governing how spatial representations emerge and transform. Finally, we revealed dissociable contributions of POR and MEC to visually guided navigation, highlighting their distinct roles.
Together, these results shed new light on the emergence of neural representations in different brain regions and their transformation through learning.
Adjudication committee
- Associate Prof. Bernhard Englitz, Radboud University, The Netherlands
- Project leader Pieter Michiel Goltstein, Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Germany
- Principal Investigator Erna Dadvydova, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defense
- Prof. Jonas Paulsen, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
- Prof. Marianne Fyhn, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
- Prof. Anders Malthe-Sørenssen, Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway
- Associate Prof. Mikkel Elle Lepperød, Department of Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing (SCAN), Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
- Researcher Kristian Lensjø, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway