Bastian Pietras
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Neuroscience
UPF Barcelona
Department of Information and Communication Technologies
Tànger, 122-140
08018 Barcelona
Driven with a genuine scientific curiosity, I strive towards unraveling the mechanisms along which our brain operates. My research focuses on synchronization phenomena of neural networks. Synchronous interaction of thousands of neurons is paradigmatic for processing and transmitting information within and across different brain areas. To this end, I study how microscopic dynamics translates into emergent macroscopic behavior and how different subnetworks interact with each other. I have used phase reduction approaches to investigate dynamic correlations of oscillatory activity in the human brain. Moreover, I combine ideas from computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics, bifurcation theory, and statistical mechanics, to study neuronal population models that are capable of generating large-scale oscillations. More recently, I have started working on stochastic neural dynamics, striving towards mean-field theories for populations of spiking neurons both in cortical areas as well as in the spinal cord.
I am always keen on applying our modeling framework in interdisciplinary empirical projects and testing our mathematical techniques against experimental data - ideas range from describing LFP recordings or Neuropixels probes up to neuroprosthetics and brain-machine interfaces. Feel free to contact me in case you are interested!
Check also my older websites as one of the COSMOS ESRs, in the Coordination Dynamics group at the VU Amsterdam, and in the Nonlinear and Biomedical Physics group at Lancaster University.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101032806.
news
Jul 15, 2023 | Together with Richard Gast and Hil Meijer we ran a tutorial on Applied Dynamical Systems Methods in the Neuroscience at the CNS*2023 conference in Leipzig! |
Feb 28, 2023 | Our extension of the exact firing rate equations for QIF neurons beyond the Ott-Antonsen / Lorentzian manifold is now published in Phys. Rev. E together with Rok Cestnik and Arkady Pikovsky! |
Dec 22, 2022 | Finally published! Hippocampal replay and metastability in a mesoscopic mean-field model with short-term depression. Fun work with Valentin Schmutz and Tilo Schwalger! |
Jan 17, 2022 | I have started my Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship together with Ernest Montbrió at the UPF in Barcelona. Exciting times ahead! |
Jan 3, 2022 | New paper out on a Kuramoto model for QIF neurons with gap junctions together with Pau Clusella and Ernest Montbrió in Chaos! |
Aug 18, 2020 | My first paper with Tilo Schwalger on “firing rate models for populations of renewal-type spiking neurons” is an Editor’s Suggestion in Phys. Rev. E. |
Oct 9, 2019 | Fantastic news: I have been awarded the FGB Jr. Career Award for my PhD research at VU Amsterdam. |
Jun 26, 2019 | Our review paper on “Network dynamics of coupled oscillators and phase reduction techniques” in Physics Reports is online. Check it out here. |
Mar 1, 2019 | I start my new postdoc position with Tilo Schwalger at the TU Berlin, Institute of Mathematics and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin. Stay tuned! |
Dec 26, 2018 | New paper on “First-order phase transistions in the Kuramoto model with compact bimodal frequency distributions” in Phys. Rev. E. |
Dec 21, 2018 | I successfully defended my PhD thesis on “Modeling phase synchronization of interacting neural populations” at the VU Amsterdam. Read more… |
Sep 28, 2018 | The final meeting of our Marie Curie doctoral training network COSMOS in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, is over. These past three years have been a blast! |