Complexidade Algorítmica em Estados Corticais
Channel: Departamento de Informática - PUC-Rio
Date: 08/10/2022

Summary: The concept of information is fundamental in neuroscience, particularly when associated with computation. However, formal aspects of computing seem to lack in this scope. In particular, the algorithm concept has been only ambiguously used to define the information processing in brain computation. We addressed this issue by studying the properties of the spiking information along different cortical states recorded from primary sensory cortices of anesthetized or freely behaving rats, based on both Shannon and algorithmic definitions. We aim to describe the complexity of spiking activity along the repertories of dynamics observed in these brain areas. During the spontaneous activity, both measures of complexity vary according to the level of spiking variability on large neuronal populations in primary cortical sensory areas and the hippocampus. This populational spiking variability suggests that the subjacent algorithms performed in these locations differ, this conclusion is due to the respective Kolmogorov complexities that are estimated from the entropies differ too. A discussion on the use of more sophisticated means to Kolmogorov complexity evaluation follows.

Short-CV: Edward Hermann Haeusler graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics (1983 at the University of Brasília. Brasil), he got a Master's degree in Theoretical Computer Science (1986 at PUC-Rio, Brasil) and a DSc degree in Theoretical Computer Science (1990 at PUC-Rio, Brasil). He spent three post-doctoral stages: 1-BRICS, Aarhus University, Denmark, 1994; 2- Informatics Department, Tuebingen University, Germany, 2003 and INRIA-Paris, France, 2013-2014.
Edward Hermann Haeusler supervised more than 24 PhDs thesis and published more than 70 journal articles in international journals with reviewing. He is an associate professor at the department of Informatics, PUC-Rio, since 1996, hired in 1991 as an assistant professor. He was a researcher of the Brazilian Council for Scientific Research (CNPq) from 1992 to 2020.  He is a consultant of FAPERJ and CAPES.  He was also program chair and/or local chair of more than a dozen international and national conferences and workshops.
His main research fields are theoretical computer science, formal semantics, logic and proof-theory. He is the coordinator of TecMF, the laboratory of Technology on Formal Methods.