OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
“What should I do next?” The answer is simple if there is one obvious choice but complicated if there are multiple options and no standout winner. The brain can deal with both scenarios, engaging circuits that drive more automatic responses in some cases and circuits that support deliberation in others. Understanding how this cognitive flexibility is implemented in the brain has the potential to reveal organizational principles for neural information processing. We have therefore carried out large-scale recordings studies in freely behaving rats performing cognitive tasks to identify signatures of dynamic circuit engagement. Here I will present results from two of these studies, including 1) observations of dynamic engagement of non-local hippocampal representations related to ongoing decision-making and 2) a demonstration of the necessity of the sequential neural activity patterns underlying non-local hippocampal representations for learning a specific task rule. These results highlight the differential engagement of hippocampal information processing at different times in support of flexible behavior.
