MCCHE Precision Convergence Webinar Series with Viktor Jirsa
On the Understanding of Behaviour as a Guide to Understand the Brain: Advances in Multiscale Coordination Dynamic
By Dr. Viktor Jirsa
Aix-Marseille-Université in Marseille, France
With High-Level Panel of Leaders in Science, Technology, On-the-Ground Action, and Policy
Over the last few decades, neuroscience and various associated disciplines have expanded enormously in terms of output, tools, methods, concepts, and large-scale projects. In spite of these developments, the principles underlying brain function and behaviour are yet only partially understood. I wish to insist that brain functioning requires the understanding of behaviour, elucidating the rules associated with all possible task realizations, rather than targeting the activity underlying a specific realization. A first step in that direction is taken by approaches focusing on dynamical structures underlying task performances, as exemplified by coordination dynamics. Its theoretical foundation owes much to Haken’s synergetics, which provides a formalism through which the degrees of freedom associated with high-dimensional systems may be effectively reduced to one or a few functional variables in the vicinity of phase transitions. The recent theoretical development of structured flows on manifolds (SFM) allows the employment to a potentially broader range of applications. I will explain the SFM framework and propose that the emergent two-tiered fast–slow dynamics may be a basic mathematical organization underlying the architecture of brain and behaviour dynamics. Then I will illustrate along a few examples how this framework allows for the incorporation of notions cardinal to ecological psychology.
About the speaker
Viktor Jirsa is Director of the Inserm Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes at Aix-Marseille-Université in Marseille, France. Dr. Jirsa received his PhD in 1996 in Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics and has since then contributed to the field of Theoretical Neuroscience, in particular through the development of large-scale brain network models based on realistic connectivity. His work has been foundational for network science in medicine with translations to clinical applications. Dr. Jirsa serves as Chief Science Officer of the European digital neuroscience infrastructure EBRAINS and lead investigator in the Human Brain Project (HBP) (https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/). Dr. Jirsa has been awarded several international prizes for his research including the first HBP Innovation prize (2021) and Grand Prix de Re-cherche en Provence (2018) and has published more than 160 scientific articles.
About the series
The Precision Convergence series is launched to catalyze unique synergy between, on the one hand, novel partnerships across sciences, sectors and jurisdictions around targeted domains of real-world solutions, and on the other hand, a next generation convergence of AI with advanced research computing and other data and digital architectures such as PSC’s Bridges-2, and supporting data sharing frameworks such as HuBMAP, informing in a real time as possible the design, deployment and monitoring of solutions for adaptive real-world behaviour and context.
The Precision Convergence Webinar Series is co-hosted by The McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) at McGill University and The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a joint computational research centre between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.