Paul Tiesinga - Microcircuit motifs in health and disease

Recent neuroimaging experiments have shown not only structural network differences between patients suffering from psychiatric illnesses and control subjects, but also differences in their large scale network dynamics. The link between local circuit abnormalities due to psychiatric illnesses and corresponding behavioural symptoms has not yet been explored extensively, but the combination of theoretical and optogenetical approaches promises to make rapid progress in addressing this question. I will review the role of oscillatory dynamics generated by microcircuit motifs in cognitive processes and indicate how defects in these motifs caused by psychiatric illnesses could affect cognition.