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Marcella Noorman

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People / Marcella NoormanHermundstad Lab
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Postdoctoral Scientist 05
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Life requires a fascinatingly intricate coordination of many dynamic biological systems operating on different spatial and temporal scales—from molecular pathways and cellular function to inter-organ coordination to animal behavior. At each level, these dynamical systems are highly recurrent, continuously performing complex computations on incoming signals to support the physical processes necessary for life. I aim to identify and understand the biological mechanisms and dynamics that enable these computations.

My work focuses on the neural computations underlying cognitive phenomena, which require neural circuits to be able to maintain and process information over long timescales. Attractor networks—recurrent networks of neurons that can maintain stable activation patterns—are commonly invoked to explain how such dynamics arise. While indirect experimental evidence supports the existence of attractor networks, how these different dynamical patterns of neural activity are generated by biological systems remains unclear. I seek to bridge this gap between theory and experiment, relying in part on how these dynamics are constrained by circuit structure. Using physiological and connectomic data, along with both analytical and computational dynamical systems techniques, I aim to relate circuit structure and function, thereby uncovering the rules that govern the dynamics of neural systems responsible for cognitive function.

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