Physics Colloquium | Brain-wide Organization of Neural Computations at Single-cell Resolution, Dec 4

The Physics & Astronomy Colloquium Series presents Tatiana Engel of Princeton University, discussing "Brain-wide Organization of Neural Computations at Single-cell Resolution" on December 4. Abstract: Understanding how distributed neural activity gives rise to behavior requires a unified view of the spatial and temporal organization of brain-wide computation. To address this challenge, the International Brain Laboratory recorded cellular-resolution spiking activity across the entire mouse brain during a perceptual decision-making task. Using this unique dataset, we mapped neural activity from over 600,000 neurons across nearly 300 brain areas, revealing how sensory, motor, and cognitive variables are represented and integrated throughout the brain. We further examined intrinsic timescales of single neurons across these regions, uncovering a brain-wide organization in which median timescales were up to fivefold longer in the midbrain and hindbrain than in the forebrain. The distribution of timescales across neurons revealed a multiscale architecture, in which fast timescales drove regional differences, while slow timescales followed a universal power law, consistent with dynamics at the edge of instability or chaos. These results outline the large-scale spatial and temporal structure of neural dynamics, providing a foundation for understanding how distributed circuits coordinate perception, decision, and action.