Curriculum Vitae
Alberto Mazzoni, PhD
Citizenship:
Date of birth:
Mailing address:
Tel.
E-mail:
Italian
August 27, 1978 – Firenze, Italy
Via delle panche 55, 50141, Firenze, Italy
+39-3494449292 (mobile);
alberto.mazzoni@sssup.it - alb.mazzoni@gmail.com
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Education
2007
PhD in Neuroscience
Neurobiology Department, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi
Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste, Italy –
Title of thesis: “From neuronal networks to behaviour: spontaneous
activity and onset of movement in the medicinal leech”
During PhD, spent several months as visiting student in the Division of
Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
2002
Master in Theoretical Physics
Physics Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Title of dissertation: “Synchronization dynamics of nonlinear oscillators”
Graduating marks: 110/110 cum laude
Background:
General Physics, Mathematics, Networks and Complex systems, Biophysics, Behaviour
recording and analysis, Neurophysiology, Computational Neuroscience, Information
Theory, Decoding, Signal Processing.
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Current position
2014 -
Post Doctoral Fellow
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
Previous positions
2011-2013
Post Doctoral Fellow
Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, Italian Institute of
Technology,Rovereto, Italy
2009-2011
Post Doctoral Fellow
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Science Department, Italian Institute of
Technology, Genova, Italy
2007-2009
Junior Researcher
Computational Neuroscience Group, Institute for Scientific Interchange
(ISI), Torino, Italy (in collaboration with Laboratory of Neurophysics and
Physiology, Universitè Paris V, Paris, France)
Supervision of graduate students
2014-
Co-supervision of PhD Thesis of Udaya Bhaskar Rongala
The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
2010-2013
Co-supervision of Master thesis and PhD thesis of Stefano Cavallari
Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy
Teaching activities
2010-2011
Information theory course for PhD students
Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy
Organization of scientific meetings
2007
Local organizer, EU-India-China Triangular Summer School on Aspects
of Complexity in Neuroscience
Institute for Scientific Interchange (ISI), Torino, Italy
Institutional responsibilities
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2005-2006
2003-2004
Member of board of directors
SISSA, Trieste, Italy
Member of board of department
Neurobiology Department, SISSA, Trieste, Italy
Membership of scientific societies
2014
2008-
Member of the Italian Society of Chaos and Complexity
Member of the Organization for Computational Neuroscience
Major collaborations
2009-
20072007-
2007-
Prof. Gaute Einevoll, morphological models of Local Field Potential
Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology, Norwegian
University of Life Sciences (UMB), Aas, Norway
Prof. Nicolas Brunel, models of integrate and fire neuronal networks
Department of statistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA
Prof. Stefano Panzeri, application of information theory to neural data
Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, Italian Institute of
Technology (IIT) Rovereto, Italy
Prof. Nikos Logotethis, information processing in macaque visual cortex
Physiology of Cognitive Processes Department, Max Planck Institute for
Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
Career path:
Ever since my Master thesis on neuronal-models synchronization, I understood that I wanted to
be a computational neuroscientist. Since my background was focused on mathematics and
physics, I decided to pursue a PhD in experimental neurobiology to complete my education.
These years (including the period spent in UCSD) taught me how to perform electrophysiological
and behavioral recordings and made me familiar with the instruments and the laboratory
environment. During my first Postdoc fellowship I reached a high level of expertise on the design
and the study of network models to reproduce and explain neural dynamics. My collaborations,
the time spent at Paris V University and at the MPI of Tuebingen, the quality of my results and
the intense congress activity to present them, gave an international resonance to my research.
During the second and third postdoc, I refined my neural data analysis skills to the point that I
was able to contribute to the development of new techniques. In a number of collaborations I
analyzed data ranging from human cortex to rat cortex, although the focus was always on monkey
data. I also acquired a second set of skills necessary to become a fully independent researcher:
teaching, supervising, writing reviews and book chapters, writing grants applications, buying and
managing lab equipment, collaborating with journals. The recent developments of Brain4
Machine-Brain Interfaces (BMBI) and my first interactions with this kind of study convinced me
that BMBI is the field where my skills can be really tested and have a stronger impact on society
beyond the academic environment. This is the reason why I recently moved to a top-level group
in the field of neuroprosthetic and I plan to start my own team here.
Funding:
I participated to the Compagnia San Paolo NNOSIP project and to the FP7 SICODE project.
I am currently involved in the FP7 NEBIAS project and in the HANDBOT MIUR project.
Starting 2015 I will participate to the Executive Programme of Scientific Cooperation between
Italy and Sweden.
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SKILLS
Computer:
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Data analysis in MatLab environment
Simulations of neural networks with C/C++ language, Python language and in
Matlab environment
LINUX and Windows operating systems.
Clamp, Adobe, Office software packages.
Parallel computation with MPI and CUDA
Modeling:
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Development of original integrate-and-fire neural network models
Multi-compartment simulations in NEURON environment
Data analysis:
 Information theory (contributed to the development of original techniques)
 Decoding
 Signal processing
Analyses performed on the following datasets:
 human ECoGs,
 primate EEG and extracellular recordings (LFP, MUA, spikes)
 rat extracellular recordings in vivo and in vitro
 mouse intracellular recordings in vivo
 neuronal cultures of rat hippocampal neurons
 invertebrate extracellular and intracellular recordings
Laboratory:
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Invertebrate preparations with isolated ganglion and semi-intact animal
Recording of intra and extracellular nervous signals
Recording of behavior of free moving leech with markers
Foreign languages:
Excellent knowledge of English (written and oral). Good knowledge of French (written
and oral). Basic knowledge of Spanish.
Related experience:
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Member of the Administrative Board of SISSA in 2005 and 2006
Member of the Social-Economic Analysis Group of the Regional Observatory on
Social Policies in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and Slovenia from 2004 to 2006
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RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
August 2001 - September 2002
Laurea Dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Leone Fronzoni (Università di Pisa,
Italy). The subject of the study was the entrainment of the periodic firing in coupled
neurons modeled as Van der Pol oscillators. The onset of synchronization was studied
analytically and via numerical simulations in presence of symmetric and asymmetric
coupling and delays.
October 2002 - April 2007
Ph.D. student first and post-doc researcher afterwards in the Neurobiology laboratory of
Prof. Vincent Torre at SISSA (Trieste, Italy).
The aim of the research was to link the spontaneous activity in the nervous system of the
leech to its behavior. This was done in three steps: analysis of the spontaneous behavior,
analysis of the spontaneous electrical activity, and analysis of the correlations between
them. Leech movement patterns were identified and classified with an in-house
developed Matlab software based on frequency and speed analysis. After the analysis of
the kinetics of each behavior, and of the transitions between them, the decision making in
the leech was described and studied as a Markov process. The subject of the second part
of the thesis was the spontaneous activity of isolated leech ganglia recorded with
extracellular electrodes. When blocking the inhibitory/excitatory pathways, the network
dynamics closely resembled those of long/short correlation states studied in statistical
mechanics, while in control conditions it was similar to the critical intermediate state.
The same experiments and analyses were repeated on neuronal cultures of rat
hippocampal neurons grown on Multi-Electrode Arrays looking for critical dynamics.
Finally analyses on behavior and spontaneous electrical activity of the leech were
combined. Using semi-intact leech preparations, the spontaneous firing of motoneurons
and the movements of the animal were simultaneously monitored. The model used to
describe the dynamics of isolated ganglia was extended to include the interactions with
the neighboring ganglia in the body and in the brain. Cross-analyzing
electrophysiological and behavioral data we studied the correlation between the motor
neuron bursts and the onset and the speed of the movements.
August - September 2003
Visiting Student in the laboratory of Prof. William Kristan (UCSD, San Diego,
California, USA), performing intracellular and extracellular electrophysiological
recordings in in vivo leech preparations.
May 2007 – September 2009
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Junior Researcher in the Computational Neuroscience Unit of Prof. Nicolas Brunel at the
Institute for Scientific Interchange (ISI, Torino, Italy), in collaboration with University
Paris V René Descartes (Paris, France).
The aim of the work was to develop a network model able to reproduce and explain
experimental results about the processing of visual information in the primate primary
visual cortex collected by the group of Prof. Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute
of Tuebingen. The model consisted in excitatory and inhibitory Leaky-Integrate-and-Fire
neurons, with sparse random connections, receiving external excitatory stimuli. The
activity of the network was monitored through the firing activity of the neurons and the
Local Field Potentials (LFPs), modeled as a combination of synaptic currents (an original
contribution that became a standard procedure in integrate and fire modeling). To study
spectral modulations of cortical activity due to thalamic stimuli, the network was injected
with signals with different intensities and spectral contents, superimposed to colored
noise. The resulting modulations in the network activity were studied in the framework of
information theory, in collaboration with Prof. Stefano Panzeri of the Italian Institute of
Technology in Genoa. Recordings from the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus of anaesthetized
monkeys watching naturalistic movies were then injected into the simulated network to
study the response of the cortical model to real complex thalamic stimuli.
Our network model was able to reproduce and explain previous experimental result such
as cross-frequency coupling, i.e. of the modulation of high frequency power by low
frequency phase that is often observed experimentally. The main finding was that
modulations of input spectrum and input intensity were encoded respectively in the low
frequencies and in the gamma band of the LFP spectrum, the former because of external
inputs/internal dynamics entrainment, and the latter because of modulation of
endogenous rhythms. This study is one of the strongest findings supporting the
hypothesis that the sensory cortex multiplexes sensory information across different
frequency bands. Finally we found that, much like real cortical networks, the model was
able to encode information not only with rate/power codes, but also with temporal codes
such as the phase of firing code, i.e. the time of the spikes relative to the phase of
undergoing network fluctuations, and the pattern code.
October 2009 – December 2011
Post-doc researcher in the Brain Machine Interface unit of Prof. Stefano Panzeri in the
Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Science department of the Italian Institute of Technology.
The first year was dedicated to developing new tools for data analysis, in particular in the
field of information theory. We developed open source software tools for information
analysis both in Python and in Matlab environment. Tools were aimed at the analysis of
experimental neural recordings for which the information bias due to the small datasets
can be particularly severe. We made at the same time two theoretical advancements in the
use of information theory in the analysis of neural data, contributing to solve to long-
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lasting issues of the field. We developed a technique based on the computation of joint
spectral information able to find the optimal (i.e. most informative) band separation given
an arbitrary set of (continuous) neural recordings and external stimuli. We developed
then a novel independence test able to quantify the significance of the independent
information carried about strongly correlated stimuli. Collaborations with the other
groups in the department included the modeling of electrical properties of nanotubes
covered electrodes developed in the department.
Later, I analyzed new primate data collected by the Prof. Logothetis MPI group to study
the encoding of correlated visual features in the primary visual cortex, in particular the
relationship between the temporal structure of the features and the timescales of
information processing in the cortex. We found evidence for two independent
information streams in the primary visual cortex: information about instantaneous
features values is encoded in precise spike patterns of single neurons, information about
the history of the features is encoded in the low global fluctuations of the neural activity
and can therefore be recovered by a phase-of-firing code. Crucially, the characteristics of
the external stimuli modulates both the precision of the spike patterns and the frequency
of the global fluctuations in the cortex. In a separate set of studies I analyzed human
ECoG recordings collected for pre-surgical screening purposes in collaboration of Prof.
Luciano Fadiga and with the Ospedale di Udine. Patients were asked to read out loud
syllables presented on a small screen. We developed an original population decoding
algorithm able to reconstruct with a >80% accuracy the syllables read by the patients
from some simple features of the ECoGs recorded on the pre-motor cortex.
January 2012 – December 2013
Post-doc researcher in the Neural Computation unit of Prof. Stefano Panzeri in the Center
for Neuroscience and Cognitive Science of the Italian Institute of Technology.
The supervision of the PhD thesis of Stefano Cavallari lead to a study on the networkscale consequences of using current or conductance-based synaptic models in LIF
networks. We found that networks with conductance-based models display a more
coherent activity and are able to carry more information about stimuli.
The collaboration with Prof. Brunel (currently at University of Chicago) continued with
the study of an analytical model of the network dynamics underlying the response of the
visual cortex. The model can predict with an high level of accuracy the relationship
between the observed LFPs and firing rates and even some features of the visual stimulus
such as the spatial contrast.
While concluding the works described above I started two new projects, one in data
analysis and one in modeling, that are currently ongoing.
The first project is in collaboration with the group of Prof. Mathew Diamond at Sissa,
Trieste. I am analyzing spike patterns recorded from the somatosensory cortex of rats
during a texture-discrimination test. We extract informative patterns of activity by means
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of Principal Component Analysis and we compare the information carried by spike
patterns and spike count over different timescales. Crucially, the rat does not always
perform the task correctly, so we can estimate the loss of information during wrong tests
for both codes.
In collaboration with the group of Prof. Gaute Einevoll of the Norwegian University of
Life Sciences (UMB) we are developing an accurate 3D model of a primary visual cortex
layer, integrating multi-compartmental neurons modeled with NEURON, extracellular
currents modeled with LFPy and different dynamic regimes modeled with networks of
integrate and fire neurons. The aim of the project is to contribute to the understanding of
the still controversial relationship between extracellularly recorded signals such as EEG
and LFP and the underlying spiking activity.
January 2014 – present
Post-doc researcher in The Biorobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di
Pisa, working in the Neuro-Robotics group with Dr. Calogero Oddo and in the Neural
Engineering group with prof. Silvestro Micera.
Current research interests include:
- Analysis of information transmission properties of neuromorphic tactile sensors for
neuroprosthetic applications
- Psychophysics of tactile perception
- Processing of tactile information in mice somatosensory cortex (in collaboration with
the group of prof. Henrik Jorntell at Lund University, Sweden)
- Analysis and models of neural responses to visual stimuli in healthy and epileptic
mice and seizure detection algorithms (in collaboration with prof. Matteo Caleo
group at the CNR in Pisa)
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PUBLICATIONS
H-index:9
Citations: 350
(Source: Google Scholar)
Papers on peer-reviewed journals
1. Barbieri F, Mazzoni A, Panzeri S, Brunel N, Stimulus dependence of local field potential
spectra: experiment vs theory – J Neurosci (in press)
2. Cavallari S, Panzeri S, Mazzoni A, - Comparison of the dynamics of neural interactions
between current-based and conductance-based integrate-and-fire recurrent networks Front.
Neural Circuits 8:12 (2014)
3. Ince RAA* , Mazzoni A*, Bartels A, Logothetis NK, Panzeri S - A novel test to determine
the significance of neural selectivity to single and multiple potentially correlated stimulus
features J Neurosci Meth 210:49-65 (2012)
4. Magri C, Mazzoni A , Logothetis NK, Panzeri S - Optimal Band Separation of Extracellular
Field Potentials J Neurosci Meth 210:66-78 (2012)
5. Mazzoni A , Brunel N, Cavallari S, Logothetis NK, Panzeri S - Cortical dynamics during
naturalistic sensory stimulations: experiments and models J Physiology-Paris 105:2-15
(2011)
6. Baranauskas G, Maggiolini E, Castagnola E, Ansaldo A, Mazzoni A, Angotzi GN, Vato A,
Ricci D, Panzeri S, Fadiga L - Carbon nanotube composite coating of neural microelectrodes
preferentially improves the multiunit signal-to-noise ratio J Neural Eng 8:066013 (2011)
7. Ince RAA, Mazzoni A, Petersen R, Panzeri S – Open source tools for the information
theoretic analysis of neural data Front. Neurosci. 62-70 (2010)
8. Mazzoni A, Whittingstall K, Brunel N, Logothetis NK, Panzeri S – Understanding the
relationships between spike rate and delta/gamma frequency bands of LFPs and EEGs using
a local cortical network model – Neuroimage 52 :956-972 (2010)
9. Mazzoni A, Panzeri S, Logothetis NK, Brunel N - Encoding of Naturalistic Stimuli by Local
Field Potential Spectra in Networks of Excitatory and Inhibitory Neurons PLoS Comp. Biol.
4 (12): (2008)
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10. Gargiulo F, Mazzoni A - Can Extremism Guarantee Pluralism? J Artif Soc Soc Simulat
11(4):9 (2008)
11. Garcia-Perez E*, Mazzoni A*, Torre V - Spontaneous electrical activity and behaviour in the
leech Hirudo medicinalis. Front. Integr. Neurosci. 1:8. doi:10.3389 (2007)
12. Mazzoni A, Broccard F, Garcia-Perez E, Bonifazi P, Ruaro ME, Torre V - On the Dynamics
of the Spontaneous Activity in Neuronal Networks, PLoS ONE 2(5): e439. (2007)
13. Garcia-Perez E*, Mazzoni A*, Torre V - Statistics of decision making in the leech, J.
Neurosci., 25: 2597-2608. (2005)
14. Mazzoni A*, Garcia-Perez E*, Torre V - Quantitative characterization and classification of
the leech behaviour, J. Neurophysiol. 93: 580-593. (2005)
Book chapters
Alberto Mazzoni, N.K. Logothetis, S. Panzeri (2013) The information content of Local
Field Potentials: experiments and models. In (Quian Quiroga and Panzeri, Eds),
Principles of Neural Coding, CRC press, Boca Raton, FL.
Peer-reviewed conference abstracts
1. Alberto Mazzoni, Yanfang Zuo, Giuseppe Notaro, Stefano Panzeri, Mathew E
Diamond - Spike timing in rat somatosensory cortex contributes to behavior BMC
Neuroscience 14 :109 (2013)
2. Francesca Barbieri, Alberto Mazzoni, Nikos K Logothetis, Stefano Panzeri, Nicolas
Brunel - Input dependence of local field potential spectra: experiment vs theory BMC
Neuroscience 14 :41 (2013)
3. Alberto Mazzoni, Christoph Kayser, Yusuke Murayama, Juan Martinez, Rodrigo
Quian Quiroga, Nikos K. Logothetis, Stefano Panzeri - Local field potential phase
and spike timing convey information about different visual features in primary visual
cortex, BMC Neuroscience 12 :48 (2011)
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4. Alberto Mazzoni, Nicolas Brunel, Christoph Kayser, Cesare Magri, Nikos
Logothetis, Stefano Panzeri – Information content and robustness of various types of
codes in integrate and fire networks presented with naturalistic stimuli BMC
Neuroscience 10:95 (2009)
5. Alberto Mazzoni, Stefano Panzeri, Nicolas Brunel - How gamma-band oscillatory
activity participates in encoding of naturalistic stimuli in random networks of
excitatory and inhibitory neurons BMC Neuroscience 9:115 (2008)
Reviewing for journals:
Review Editor for Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
Referee for: Cerebral Cortex, PLoS Computational Biology, Neuroimage, Journal of
Computational Neuroscience, Brain Research, Neural Computation, Communications in
Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulations, Physical Review X, Frontiers in System
Neuroscience, Physical Review Letters, Transaction on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation
Engineering
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CONFERENCES:
Invited talks
1. Local Field Potential Dynamics of Spatially Embedded Integrate-and-Fire Neurons.
Mathematical Modeling and Statistical Analysis in Neuroscience. Copenhagen,
Denmark, July 2-4, 2014
2. Spike timing in rat somatosensory cortex contributes to behavior. The brain:
criticality, dynamics, networks and function, Anacapri, Italy, September 2-6, 2013
3. Modeling of multi-scale activity in the cortex identifies optimally informative signals
for BMI. 6th European Summer School of Neuroengineering “Massimo Grattarola”,
Genova, Italy, June 11-15, 2012
4. Population coding. Computational Neuroscience Society Meeting, Analysis of Spike
Trains Tutorial, Stockholm, Sweden, July 22-29, 2011
5. Multiplexing of Visual Information in Primary Visual Cortex Computational
Neuroscience Society Meeting, Workshop on Methods of Systems Identification for
Studying Information Processing in Sensory Systems, Stockholm, Sweden, July 2229, 2011
6. Neuronal avalanches 1st Neurobiology summer school, International School for
Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy, July 4-9, 2011
7. Primary Visual Cortex Encodes Complementary Information About Naturalistic
Movies at Different Temporal Scales - 9th International Neural Coding Workshop
(NC2010), Oct 29 – Nov 3, 2010, Limassol, Cyprus
8. Neurons in primary visual cortex encode naturalistic visual information using
multiple temporal scales – Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience,
Sept 27 - Oct 1., 2010, Berlin, Germany
9. A model for the encoding of naturalistic stimuli in LFP frequency bands - Network
Synchronization: from dynamical systems to neuroscience, May 19-30 , 2008,
Leiden, NL (Chairman of the “Oscillations in the visual cortex” session)
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10. Low frequencies and gamma frequencies in the LFP spectrum encode different
features of thalamic stimuli - Local field potentials as a vista on the function of neural
circuits, April 4, 2008, Manchester, UK
11. Behaviour and decision making in the leech - First Meeting of Biomedical PhD
Programs. February 20-21, 2006, Ferrara, Italy
Posters
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Interplay between exhogenous and endogenous rhythms in recurrent networks with
conductance-based neurons, 11th International Neural coding Workshop (NC2012),
Prague, Czech Republic, Sept 2-7, 2012,
Neurons in primary visual cortex encode naturalistic visual information using
multiple temporal scales, Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience,
Washington, USA, November 12-16, 2011.
Primary visual cortex (V1) encodes complementary information about naturalistic
movies at different temporal scales AREADNE 2010 – June 17-10, 2010, Santorini,
Greece
How gamma-band oscillatory activity participates in encoding of naturalistic stimuli
in random networks of excitatory and inhibitory neurons Minischool and Workshop
on Multiple Time Scales in the Dynamics of the Nervous System, ICTP, Trieste, Italy
- June 16-20, 2008
Dynamics of Spontaneous Activity in Neuronal Networks - Neural Coding
Computation and Dynamics, September 15-18, 2007, Hossegor, France
Spontaneous behaviour and decision making in the leech - First International Meeting
on Evolution, Development and Neurobiology of the Leech, 29 Sep – 3 Oct, 2004,
Lille, France
Workshops and schools
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LFP Workshop: Modelling and interpretation of extracellular field potentials, January
2009, Oslo, Norway
Minischool and Workshop on Multiple Time Scales in the Dynamics of the Nervous
System, June 16-20, 2008, ICTP, Trieste, Italy
AREADNE – Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles. June 22-25,
2006, Santorini, Greece.
School and Workshop on Structure and Function of Complex Networks, May 16 - 28,
2005, ICTP, Trieste, Italy.
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