Good morning. Thanks for coming back. Yesterday we discussed how neurons may benefit from spiking even in absence of inputs, maintaining a base level of ADP production, from ATP that would otherwise clog its production line & thus create free radicals.

https://twitter.com/TPVogels/status/1582334992436207617?s=20&t=oZnonjdT9Yg_KH57XQtp5w

But there is quite a lot more to unpack still, and some of you may not have read the paper (yet ;) so let's see where we can go with this. Would you like to hear about

Dear #neurotwitter, we dropped this onto @biorxiv_neursci for your perusal. It's an unusual piece from my lab & I really, really enjoyed working on it with @chc1987. Here it is: Metabolically spikes serve neuronal energy homeostasis (and protect neurons). doi.org/10.1101/2022.1… "Metabolic Spikes" is a modelling study on the origins of "spontaneous" activity in neural systems. That sort of baseline activity is ubiquitous! As a field, we accept it's there & include it in models, but why do neurons do that? Fire in the absence of input? Seems kinda weird.

OK, finally our tweeprint for the NeurIPS paper. Here we go. Synaptic plasticity, it's the holy grail of learning and memory. This is work by @basile_cfx, @hisspikeness, @ejagnes, @countzerozz & myself, on how to find the grail, maybe biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Common dogma dictates that we remember, learn, and develop to sense, see, hear, etc. in early devo by way of activity-dependent rules that determine how we wire up, how we maintain and how we adjust our synapses.

So, the deadline for the IBRO SIMONS #imbizo is approaching quickly. It's quite possibly the best computational neuroscience summer school south of the equator, so do apply at imbizo.africa @SCglobalbrain @isiCNI @ibroSecretariat @alfairhall @JosephRaimondo @adantro While you're here, we have some tips and tricks for a successful application to the imbizo, but more generally to anything you will ever want to apply for:
(added pics for added value)

@markdhumphries @cian_neuro @marius10p @ulisespereirao @neurograce @computingnature @bitking69 @CousinAmygdala @michael_okun Thanks Mark! A few answers on E/I balance. Re: Experimental influence, yeah, I'd say the early E/I papers by @HSompolinsky et al. were definitely an inspiration for the field & I'd say it's the constant T&E interplay that makes the EI balance example great ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8939866 @markdhumphries @cian_neuro @marius10p @ulisespereirao @neurograce @computingnature @bitking69 @CousinAmygdala @michael_okun @HSompolinsky @shadlen & Newsome had been thinking about the origins of irregular firing for a long time, & theory provided an explanation for what they saw. I think the first people to actually record EI balance were Moore & @SachaNelsonLab physiology.org/doi/abs/10.115… in parallel w/ the theory.