Cyriel M A Pennartz

Cyriel M A Pennartz
University of Amsterdam | UVA · Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences

Prof. Dr.

About

300
Publications
53,388
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14,722
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 2007 - present
January 1997 - December 2003
Independent Researcher
Independent Researcher
January 1995 - December 1997

Publications

Publications (300)
Preprint
Full-text available
The emergence of orientation selectivity in the visual cortex is a well-known phenomenon in neuroscience, but the details of such emergence and the role of different cortical layers and cell types, particularly in rodents which lack a topographical organization of orientation-selectivity (OS) properties, are less clear. To tackle this question, we...
Preprint
Full-text available
Predictive coding (PC) proposes that our brains work as an inference machine, generating an internal model of the world and minimizing predictions errors (i.e., differences between external sensory evidence and internal prediction signals). Theoretical models of PC often rely on high-level approaches, and therefore implementations detailing which n...
Article
Full-text available
Critics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) posit that artificial agents cannot achieve consciousness even in principle, because they lack certain necessary pre-conditions present in biological agents. Here we highlight arguments from a neuroscientific and neuromorphic engineering perspective as to why such a strict denial of consciousness in artificia...
Article
Full-text available
Conscious reportability of visual input is associated with a bimodal neural response in primary visual cortex (V1): an early-latency response coupled to stimulus features and a late-latency response coupled to stimulus report or detection. This late wave of activity, central to major theories of consciousness, is thought to be driven by prefrontal...
Article
We are pleased to announce that the presentations and posters of the Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2023) have become available. Discover the detailed program on the official website https://cns2023.sched.com ... Join us at Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting.
Preprint
Full-text available
Compressed hippocampal place-cell sequences have been associated with memory storage, retrieval and planning, but it remains unclear how they align with activity in the parahippocampal cortex. In a visuospatial discrimination task, we found a wide repertoire of hippocampal place cell sequences, which recapitulated paths across the task environment....
Article
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Phase entrainment of cells by theta oscillations is thought to globally coordinate the activity of cell assemblies across different structures, such as the hippocampus and neocortex. This coordination is likely required for optimal processing of sensory input during recognition and decision-making processes. In quadruple-area ensemble recordings fr...
Article
Full-text available
Predictive coding (PC) is an influential theory in neuroscience, which suggests the existence of a cortical architecture that is constantly generating and updating predictive representations of sensory inputs. Owing to its hierarchical and generative nature, PC has inspired many computational models of perception in the literature. However, the bio...
Preprint
Full-text available
Stimulation of specific cell groups under different network regimes (e.g., spontaneous activity or sensory-evoked activity) can provide insights into the neural dynamics of cortical columns. While these protocols are challenging to perform experimentally, modelling can serve as a powerful tool for such explorations. Using detailed electrophysiologi...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, brain research has indisputably entered a new epoch, driven by substantial methodological advances and digitally enabled data integration and modelling at multiple scales—from molecules to the whole brain. Major advances are emerging at the intersection of neuroscience with technology and computing. This new science of the brain co...
Preprint
Full-text available
Uncertainty is omnipresent. While humans and other animals take uncertainty into account during decision making, it remains unclear how it is represented in cortex. To investigate the effect of stimulus reliability on uncertainty representation in cortical neurons, we analyzed single unit activity data recorded in mouse PPC, while animals performed...
Article
The orbitofrontal cortex, one of the key neocortical areas in valuation and emotion, is critical for cognitive flexibility but its role in the consolidation of recently acquired information remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate orbitofrontal offline replay in the context of a place-reward association task on a maze with varying goal locations. When...
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The dentate gyrus subfield of the hippocampus is thought to be critically involved in the disambiguation of similar episodic experiences and places in a context-dependent manner. However, most empirical evidence has come from lesion and gene knock-out studies in rodents, in which the dentate gyrus function is permanently perturbed and compensation...
Preprint
How is conscious experience related to material brain processes? A variety of theories aiming to answer this age-old question have emerged from the recent surge in consciousness research, and some are now hotly debated. While most researchers have so far focused on the development and validation of their preferred theory in relative isolation, this...
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After severe brain injury, zolpidem is known to cause spectacular, often short-lived, restorations of brain functions in a small subgroup of patients. Previously, we showed that these zolpidem-induced neurological recoveries can be paralleled by significant changes in functional connectivity throughout the brain. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a n...
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Full-text available
Neural circuits support behavioral adaptations by integrating sensory and motor information with reward and error-driven learning signals, but it remains poorly understood how these signals are distributed across different levels of the corticohippocampal hierarchy. We trained rats on a multisensory object-recognition task and compared visual and t...
Article
Full-text available
Primary sensory cortices respond to crossmodal stimuli—for example, auditory responses are found in primary visual cortex (V1). However, it remains unclear whether these responses reflect sensory inputs or behavioral modulation through sound-evoked body movement. We address this controversy by showing that sound-evoked activity in V1 of awake mice...
Article
Full-text available
This Perspective presents the Modular-Integrative Modeling approach, a novel framework in neuroscience for developing brain models that blend biological realism with functional performance to provide a holistic view on brain function in interaction with the body and environment.
Preprint
Critics of Artificial Intelligence posit that artificial agents cannot achieve consciousness even in principle, because they lack certain necessary conditions for consciousness present in biological agents. Here we highlight arguments from a neuroscientific and neuromorphic engineering perspective as to why such a strict denial of consciousness in...
Preprint
Full-text available
Efficient sensory detection requires the capacity to ignore task-irrelevant information, for example when optic flow patterns created by egomotion need to be disentangled from object perception. To investigate how this is achieved in the visual system, predictive coding with sensorimotor mismatch detection is an attractive starting point. Indeed, e...
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Full-text available
Behavioral variability across individuals leads to substantial performance differences during cognitive tasks, although its neuronal origin and mechanisms remain elusive. Here we use recurrent neural networks trained on a multisensory decision-making task to investigate inter-subject behavioral variability. By uniquely characterizing each network w...
Article
Deep learning and predictive coding architectures commonly assume that inference in neural networks is hierarchical. However, largely neglected in deep learning and predictive coding architectures is the neurobiological evidence that all hierarchical cortical areas, higher or lower, project to and receive signals directly from subcortical areas. Gi...
Article
Full-text available
The ventral visual processing hierarchy of the cortex needs to fulfill at least two key functions: perceived objects must be mapped to high-level representations invariantly of the precise viewing conditions, and a generative model must be learned that allows, for instance, to fill in occluded information guided by visual experience. Here, we show...
Preprint
Full-text available
Significant advances in the scientific investigation of the neurobiology of consciousness have been slow to be translated into clinical settings, limited by factors of conceptual (e.g., what is consciousness?), methodological (e.g., how to identify reliable indicators of consciousness?), and technical (e.g., how to improve sensitivity and specifici...
Preprint
How deep is the current diversity in the panoply of theories to define consciousness, and to what extent do these theories share common denominators? Here we first examine to what extent different theories are commensurable (or comparable) along particular dimensions. We posit logical (and, when applicable, empirical) commensurability as a necessar...
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Full-text available
Neural rhythms are ubiquitous in cortical recordings, but it is unclear whether they emerge due to the basic structure of cortical microcircuits, or depend on function. Using detailed electrophysiological and anatomical data of mouse V1, we explored this question by building a spiking network model of a cortical column incorporating pyramidal cells...
Article
Full-text available
The definition of the visual cortex is primarily based on the evidence that lesions of this area impair visual perception. However, this does not exclude that the visual cortex may process more information than of retinal origin alone, or that other brain structures contribute to vision. Indeed, research across the past decades has shown that non-v...
Preprint
Full-text available
Conscious reportability of visual input is associated with a bimodal neural response in primary visual cortex (V1): an early-latency response coupled to stimulus features and a late-latency response coupled to stimulus report or detection. This late wave of activity, central to major theories of consciousness, is thought to be driven by prefrontal...
Preprint
Full-text available
Neural circuits support behavioral adaptations by integrating sensory and motor information with reward and error-driven learning signals, but it remains poorly understood how these signals are distributed across different levels of the corticohippocampal hierarchy. We trained rats on a multisensory object-recognition task and compared visual and t...
Article
Full-text available
Cortical computations require coordination of neuronal activity within and across multiple areas. We characterized spiking relationships within and between areas by quantifying coupling of single neurons to population firing patterns. Single-neuron population coupling (SNPC) was investigated using ensemble recordings from hippocampal CA1 region and...
Article
Full-text available
Throughout the last decades, understanding the neural mechanisms of sensory processing has been a key objective for neuroscientists. Many studies focused on uncovering the microcircuit-level architecture of somatosensation using the rodent whisker system as a model. Although these studies have significantly advanced our understanding of tactile pro...
Preprint
Full-text available
Predictive coding (PC) is an influential theory in neuroscience, which suggests the existence of a cortical architecture that is constantly generating and updating predictive representations of sensory inputs. Owing to its hierarchical and generative nature, PC has inspired many computational models of perception in the literature. However, the bio...
Article
Full-text available
Neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) may not only signal current visual input but also relevant contextual information such as reward expectancy and the subject's spatial position. Such contextual representations need not be restricted to V1 but could participate in a coherent mapping throughout sensory cortices. Here, we show that spiking activit...
Preprint
Full-text available
Brain research has in recent years indisputably entered a new epoch, driven by substantial methodological advances and digitally enabled data integration and modeling at multiple scales – from molecules to the whole system. Major advances are emerging at the intersection of neuroscience with technology and computing. This new science of the brain i...
Article
Full-text available
Behavioral states affect neuronal responses throughout the cortex and influence visual processing. Quiet wakefulness (QW) is a behavioral state during which subjects are quiescent but awake and connected to the environment. Here, we examined the effects of pre-stimulus arousal variability on post-stimulus neural activity in the primary visual corte...
Article
Full-text available
We are delighted to present you the Proceedings of the 2022 CNS meeting. The CNS meeting encourages approaches that combine theoretical, computational, and experimental work in the neurosciences, and provides an opportunity for participants to share their views. The abstracts corresponding to speakers' talks and posters are what you find collected...
Preprint
The ventral visual processing hierarchy of the cortex needs to fulfill at least two key functions: Perceived objects must be mapped to high-level representations invariantly of the precise viewing conditions, and a generative model must be learned that allows, for instance, to fill in occluded information guided by visual experience. Here, we show...
Preprint
Primary sensory cortices respond to crossmodal stimuli, for example auditory responses are found in primary visual cortex (V1). However, it remains unclear whether these responses reflect sensory inputs or behavioural modulation through sound-evoked body movement. We address this controversy by showing that sound-evoked activity in V1 of awake mice...
Article
Full-text available
This review provides an update on Neurorepresentationalism, a theoretical framework that defines conscious experience as multimodal, situational survey and explains its neural basis from brain systems constructing best-guess representations of sensations originating in our environment and body [1]. It posits that conscious experience is characteriz...
Preprint
Behavioral states affect neuronal responses throughout the cortex and influence visual processing. Quiet wakefulness (QW) is a behavioral state during which subjects are quiescent, but awake and connected to the environment. Here, we examined the effects of pre-stimulus arousal variability on post-stimulus neural activity in primary visual cortex (...
Article
The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays a key role in integrating sensory inputs from different modalities to support adaptive behavior. Neuronal activity in PPC reflects perceptual decision making across behavioral tasks, but the mechanistic involvement of PPC is unclear. In an audiovisual change detection task, we tested the hypothesis that PPC...
Article
Full-text available
Primary sensory areas constitute crucial nodes during perceptual decision making. However, it remains unclear to what extent they mainly constitute a feedforward processing step, or rather are continuously involved in a recurrent network together with higher-order areas. We found that the temporal window in which primary visual cortex is required f...
Article
Full-text available
Merker et al.'s critique calls for a deeper analysis of panpsychism. In principle, the concept of integrated information can be applied to photodiodes and subatomic particles, but I suggest the main obstacle is the lack of any evidence to confirm the presence of consciousness. Also MRW's perspectivalist theory illustrates the difficulties in synthe...
Article
Full-text available
Background Assessing consciousness in other subjects, particularly in non-verbal and behaviourally disabled subjects (e.g., patients with disorders of consciousness), is notoriously challenging but increasingly urgent. The high rate of misdiagnosis among disorders of consciousness raises the need for new perspectives in order to inspire new technic...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding the human brain is a "Grand Challenge" for 21st century research. Computational approaches enable large and complex datasets to be addressed efficiently, supported by artificial neural networks, modeling and simulation. Dynamic generative multiscale models, which enable the investigation of causation across scales and are guided by pr...
Article
Full-text available
Recognising familiar places is a competence required in many engineering applications that interact with the real world such as robot navigation. Combining information from different sensory sources promotes robustness and accuracy of place recognition. However, mismatch in data registration, dimensionality, and timing between modalities remain cha...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past few years, the various areas that surround the primary visual cortex (V1) in the mouse have been associated with many functions, ranging from higher order visual processing to decision-making. Recently, some studies have shown that higher order visual areas influence the activity of the primary visual cortex, refining its processing c...
Article
Policymakers aim to move toward animal-free alternatives for scientific research and have introduced very strict regulations for animal research. We argue that, for neuroscience research, until viable and translational alternatives become available and the value of these alternatives has been proven, the use of animals should not be compromised.
Preprint
Full-text available
Neurons in primary visual cortex (V1) may not only signal current visual input but also relevant contextual information such as reward expectancy and the subject's spatial position. Such location-specific representations need not be restricted to V1 but could participate in a coherent mapping throughout sensory cortices. Here we show that spiking a...
Article
Full-text available
Predictive coding provides a computational paradigm for modeling perceptual processing as the construction of representations accounting for causes of sensory inputs. Here, we developed a scalable, deep network architecture for predictive coding that is trained using a gated Hebbian learning rule and mimics the feedforward and feedback connectivity...
Preprint
Full-text available
The transformation of sensory inputs into behavioral outputs is characterized by an interplay between feedforward and feedback operations in cortical hierarchies. Even in simple sensorimotor transformations, recurrent processing is often expressed in primary cortices in a late phase of the cortical response to sensory stimuli. This late phase is en...
Preprint
Full-text available
Over the past few years, the various areas that surround the primary visual cortex in the mouse have been associated with many functions, ranging from higher-order visual processing to decision making. Recently, some studies have shown that higher-order visual areas influence the activity of the primary visual cortex, refining its processing capabi...
Article
Full-text available
The perirhinal cortex is situated on the border between sensory association cortex and the hippocampal formation. It serves an important function as a transition area between the sensory neocortex and the medial temporal lobe. While the perirhinal cortex has traditionally been associated with object coding and the "what" pathway of the temporal lob...
Article
Full-text available
Some patients with severe brain injury show short-term neurological improvements, such as recovery of consciousness, motor function, or speech after administering zolpidem, a GABA receptor agonist. The working mechanism of this paradoxical phenomenon remains unknown. In this study, we used electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography to invest...
Article
Full-text available
We act upon stimuli in our surrounding environment by gathering the multisensory information they convey and by integrating this information to decide on a behavioral action. We hypothesized that the anterolateral secondary visual cortex (area AL) of the mouse brain may serve as a hub for sensorimotor transformation of audiovisual information. We i...
Preprint
Full-text available
Predictive coding provides a computational paradigm for modelling perceptual processing as the construction of representations accounting for causes of sensory inputs. Here, we develop a scalable, deep predictive coding network that is trained using a Hebbian learning rule. Without a priori constraints that would force model neurons to respond like...