On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
In cognitive neuroscience, brain activity is typically associated with certain cognitive functions, such as decision making or working memory. However, the majority of brain activity is not spent on such cognitive functions, but generated spontaneously. The brain devotes more than 95% of its energy consumption towards spontaneous activity, pointing towards a critical role for brain function. I study spontaneous brain activity using a variety of techniques and species, ranging from fMRI in humans, and in vivo electrophysiology in cats, rodents and primates, to computational modelling. In my talk, I’ll explore various aspects of spontaneous cortical activity: its spatial structure, its interaction with stimulus-evoked responses, and its significance for cognition and behaviour. Taken together, these studies show that spontaneous brain activity plays an important role in sensory processing, and argue that understanding the brain’s internal dynamics is essential to understanding the brain as a whole.
