SFB Experimental Days
Dec 14/15, 2023, Old Lecture Hall, German Primate Center
Organizer: Alexander Gail
The “Empirical Days” workshop is a sequel to the Theory Days Workshop 2023. PIs and project members of empirically working projects present as tandems their concepts, theories and experimental approaches to further intensify the exchange with theoretically working projects on joint modelling approaches.

Lars Penke & Johannes Ruß– Interindividual differences in transparent dyadic human interactions
Caspar Schwiedrzik – Neural implementation of predictive processing (in a social context)
Hannes Rakoczy & Saba Amirhaftehran – The role of knowledge and belief ascription in Theory of Mind
Alex Gail, Irene Lacal & Ayuno Nakahashi– Deciding while acting in dynamic social settings - The frontoparietal network for selecting, planning and controlling action
Claudia Fichtel – Partner choice and social learning
& Elif Karakoc – Social learning in redfronted lemurs
Julia Fischer & Will O'Hearn– Modelling social decision-making: from individual to population levels
Nivi Mani, Ricarda Bothe, Sebastian Isbaner & Sarah Eiteljörge– Selective attention in dynamic social interactions

SFB Retreat 2023
Retreat, Oct 10-12
The retreat is an annual fixture and gives all SFB members to discuss about the developments of the previous year and the plans for the following year. This year's retreat was held at the Landhotel Rothenberg in Volpriehausen.

Intrinsic- and information-timescales
July 5 and July 12, 9.15AM-12.30 PM; Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation
Organizers: Viola Priesemann, Paul Spitzner and Lucas Rudelt
On the one hand, the intrinsic timescale can be thought of as the duration over which any perturbation reverberates within the network. It is measured by the decay time of an exponentially decaying autocorrelation function, and has been used as a key observable to investigate a functional hierarchy across the primate cortex and serves as a measure of working memory. It is also a proxy for the distance to criticality and quantifies a system’s dynamic working point. On the other hand, the information timescale is a complementary measure based on information-theoretic predictability. Predictability quantifies the proportion of information in current neural spiking that can be predicted from the recent past. This predictable information reflects temporal redundancy, and facilitates, for instance, active information storage (maintaining past input to combine it with present input) and associative learning. The according information timescale then describes over which time past information has to be integrated until predictability no further increases. We will be covering two software tools our group developed and apply them to data you bring in. The tools are written in python, and we will cover how to import your data from usual formats such as hdf5.

SFB Theory Days
May 31st/June 1st, 2023, seminar rooms, German Primate Center
Organizers: Viola Priesemann and Florentin Wörgötter
Viola Priesemann – Assessing network dynamics, intrinsic timescales, and a glimpse to Bayesian inference
Alex Ecker – Action Capture Platform: Assessing monkey behavior using machine vision
Michael Wibral – Information theoretic tools for understanding neural information processing
Fred Wolf – Reverse-time inference of directed biological dynamics
Elad Schneidman – Inferring rules of social foraging and their neural representations
Florentin Woergoetter – How to analyze and encode movements and actions
Fabian Sinz – Machine Learning tools to models neural activity and behavior
Igor Kagan, Zurna Ahmed, Irene Lacal, Felix Schneider, Darius Lewen, Neda Shahidi – Experimentalists’ flash talks
Panel discussion - what does theory contribute to experiments and vice versa

13th Annual Primate Neurobiology Meeting
Conference, April 26-28, 2023, German Primate Center
Organizers: Melanie Wilke, Stefan Treue, Alexander Gail, Hans Scherberger, Igor Kagan, Caspar Schwiedrzik and Raymundo Baez-Mendoza
Participants may present any aspect of their work at any stage – from the presentation of methods to that of concepts, from the introduction of very first results to the discussion of work that may have already been presented at other conferences. Students and postdocs working in nonhuman primate laboratories to are particularly invited to participate.

Insights into the neural basis of cognition from human intracranial electrophysiology
Symposium at the 15th Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG) March 24, 2023, 1 PM - 3 PM; ZHG
Organizer: Caspar Schwiedrzik
The human brain produces complex cognitive operations and behaviors, some of which are arguably uniquely human. The primary means to investigate their neural basis have been noninvasive techniques. However, the limited spatiotemporal resolution of noninvasive imaging hampers progress in understanding health and disease. Human intracranial electrophysiology has emerged as a key technology in overcoming these difficulties. In particular, the high spatiotemporal resolution of intracranial EEG (iEEG) in epilepsy patients undergoing presurgical evaluation enables studying (sub)cortical dynamics underlying human cognition. With specialized research electrodes, it has become possible to extend these investigations across spatial scales, to the level of cortical layers and single cells. This allows unraveling the neural basis of complex behavior directly in the human brain in unprecedented detail.
This symposium, organized by SFB member Caspar Schwiedrzik aims to elucidate neural mechanisms underlying human cognitive processes using intracranial recordings. We will address different facets of cognition, taking complimentary perspectives from different recording and analysis techniques; as well as providing insight into ethical aspects and technical challenges when working with patients. Hui Zhang (Bochum) will demonstrate how the reinstatement and transformation of stimulus-specific memories can be studied using multivariate analyses to identify meso- and macroscale networks. Lucia Melloni (Frankfurt) will show how continuous input is segmented into episodic memories using tasks involving sequences and visual narratives using electrocorticography. Randolph Helfrich (Tübingen) will talk about how population dynamics of human prefrontal cortex integrate contextual cues and prior evidence to guide human goal-directed behavior. Caspar Schwiedrzik (Göttingen) )will present recordings with laminar resolution investigating neural computations underlying predictive processing in perception. Marcel Bausch (Bonn) will address the question how content and context are combined to process relevant memories using single neuron recordings in the medial temporal lobe. Together, these talks will provide an exciting overview of the burgeoning field of human intracranial electrophysiology.

Neuroscience of naturalistic navigation and foraging in non-human primates
Symposium at the 15th Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG) March 23, 2023, 11 AM - 1 PM; ZHG
Organizers: Irene Lacal & Alex Gail
A main aim of system neuroscience research in primates is to understand the neural underpinnings of goal directed behavior. With the advance in wireless technologies for neural recordings, video-based motion tracking and powerful tools for full-body behavior quantification, unprecedented opportunities arise for studying brain networks during naturalistic behaviors. In particular, ecologically highly relevant behaviors such as multi-source foraging, free exploration in complex environments and social interactions have become accessible for neurophysiological studies. This symposium brings together international researchers pioneering the field of neurophysiology in non-human primates during unrestrained behaviors in complex environments. Daniel Huber (University of Geneva) will present the latest development of EthoLoop, a novel tracking system able to follow movements and analyze complex behaviors of unrestrained mouse lemurs in real time in combination with wireless neural recordings. Dora E. Angelaki (NY University) will show how hippocampal and cortical activity in unrestrained rhesus monkeys relate to foraging behavior both in freely moving and virtual reality environments. Zurna Ahmed (German Primate Center & SFB 1528) will introduce the Exploration Room, a novel modular experimental setting encouraging unrestrained, yet repetitive full-body behaviors beyond walking in rhesus macaques while recording from the frontoparietal reach network. Irene Lacal and Neda Shahidi (German Primate Center & SFB 1528) will highlight novel paradigms in the Exploration Room for studying spatial cognition during naturalistic solo or dyadic foraging and the frontoparietal representations of dynamic evaluation of choices. Jan Zimmermann (University of Minnesota) will present how unconstrained behavior is organized across multiple spatial and temporal scales in rhesus monkeys and how electrophysiology experiments can give us a unique insight into these processes.