T. Tompoš (Tea)

Distinct neuronal cell types in the brain exert various activity regimes upon the same stimulation patterns. It hints at the existence of multiple information processing strategies utilised by the brain. Indeed, as found in Zeldenrust et al. (2021) (https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.06.371658), the excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the primary sensory cortex in rodents transfer unequal amounts of stimulus-related information. While excitatory neurons seemingly filter out a big part of the signal, inhibitory neurons show broadband information transfer. The plausible mechanistic explanation is related to differences in the spiking threshold adaptation between two cell types.

I work on implementing the intracellular information-processing mechanisms, like the adaptive spike threshold, in neuromorphic software and later hardware. The ultimate goal is to advance the currently used neuromorphic algorithms with biologically realistic features. It shall improve their task-specific performance and offer attractive further applications.

• Natural Computing & Neurotechnology