PhD THESIS ANTICIPATED SYNCHRONIZATION IN NEURONAL CIRCUITS

124 Pages·2013·7.73 MB·English

PhD THESIS
ANTICIPATED SYNCHRONIZATION IN
NEURONAL CIRCUITS
Fernanda Selingardi Matias
Recife - PE, Brazil
2014

To mygrandparentsMagda,Tauil,Socorro,Matiasandmy
greatgrandmotherHelena.
Acknowledgements
Iwishtoexpressmygratitudetoeveryonewhocontributedtomakethisthesisareality. At
first Iwouldliketo thanksincerelymyadvisors,MauroCopelliandClaudio Mirasso,fortheir
enthusiasticguidanceallalongmyPhD. Theyhadalways goodideas forfurtherinvestigations
and gave me a lot of their time. I have learned a lot from them and I will never thank them
enough. I would also liketo thank my co-adviserPedro Carelli for his friendship, forshowing
mehow amazing experimentscould beand for helpingmein my first steps in dataanalysis. It
was apleasuretobesupervisedby this3-professorsmotif. Iamsograteful fortheopportunity
theygavemetoworkinthisamazingproject,togiveseminarsindifferentplaces,tovisitgreat
labs,to attendto veryimportantneurosciencecourses and tospendoneyear inPalma.
For great contributions of our collaborators, I thank Dr. Steven Bressler for providing the
dataanalyzed in chapter 5 and for his great suggestionsto improveour paper; Leonardo Gollo
for teaching me the details of the simulations presented in Chapters 4 and 5 and for fruitful
discussionevenviaskype;KlausStiefel forproposingtheexperimentdescribed inSection 2.6
andMarylkaUusisaariforkindlyprovidethedataanalyzedinthissection;ClaudiaClopathfor
helping mewith the resultspresented in Section 6.3, which were part ofmy project during the
Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course; Jordi Zamora-Munt for the ideas presented in
Section 2.7.1;VictorEguíluz,ThomasJünglingand HideyukiKatofor helpfuladvices.
I would like to thank Reynaldo Pinto, Leonardo Maia, John Rinzel, Wulfram Gerstner and
Yves Frégnac for letting me visit their labs and talk to their groups. I also want to thank the
colleagues thatIhavemetduringsuch visits,conferences and schoolsforrefreshing myideas,
in particular Quel, Bryan, Thiago Mosqueiro, Megumi. I am very grateful to all my friends
from Recife and Palma for advices, discussions,journal clubs, nicelunches and coffee breaks.
They made this journey more pleasant. In particular, I want to thank Bruno, Nando, Tiago,
Vladimir, Alfredo, Romero, João, Thaís, Deni, Fábio, Eglânio, Hugo, Leo, Tiaguinho, as well
as Neus,MiguelSoriano, MiguelEscalona,Luis,Pedro, Konstantinand Adrián. Ialsowantto
thank Prof. Marcelo Cairrão and Ubirakitan for the enthusiasm with the recent collaboration
andIgorforhispatienceduringtheexperimentsIhaveattended. Moreover,Iamreallyindebted
to allthepeopleresponsibleforthefavorable environmentconditionsat UFPE and IFISC. My
special thanks to Alexsandra, Hilda, Aziel and Claudésio, as well as to Rubén, Antònia and
Marta. Addtionally,Ithankallthemembersofthejuryforacceptingbeingpartofthisprocess.
I am beholden to manygenerous friends I havemet in Palma: Natália, Leo, Joana, Johnna,
Charles,Isis,Ernesto,CrisandAna. IwouldliketothankmyparentsFernandaandTadeu,my
sister Isadora, my grandparents Magda, Tauil, Socorro and Matias, all my family and friends
for their never ending care and comprehension. I also thank to my great grandmother Helena
for her love. Finally, I reserve my especial thank to Sérgio for unconditionalloveand support.
Iam gladto sharemylifewithsomeonesoamazing andadmirable.
Forfinancial supportIthankto CNPq, CAPES and FINEP.
If thebrainwere simpleenoughforusto understandit,we wouldbetoo
simpletounderstandit"
—KENHILL