Exended Deadline: Due to numerous request the deadline for submission of manuscripts to this special issue has been extended to 15. February 2009.

SCOPE

To understand how perception, attention, action, learning and memory work, we need to gather data from multiple levels of complexity and from various brain states (normal and diseased) and integrate them at the brain-scale level. We need to identify the neuronal groups involved in these functions, their laminar distributions and their different types of neurons, draw detailed circuit diagrams, determine the forms of synaptic transmission and plasticity between different neurons and study the dynamics of the cortical microcircuits at the cellular and synaptic level that comprise these neuronal groups. Recent years have witnessed a dramatic accumulation of knowledge about the morphological, physiological and molecular characteristics, as well as the connectivity and synaptic properties of cortical neurons. Despite these advances, however, only limited insight was gained into the computational function of the neurons; in particular, the role of the various types of interneurons remains elusive. Mathematical and computational microcircuit models play an instrumental role in exploring microcircuit functions and facilitate the dissection the operations performed by diverse interneurons.

The goal of the special issue is to provide a snapshot and a resume of the current state-of-the-art of the ongoing research avenues concerning cortical microcircuits with particular emphasis on the functional roles of the various inhibitory interneurons in information processing within normal and diseased behavioural and cognitive states. The emphasis will be on computational models that are tightly grounded on experimental data.

SPECIFIC AIMS

• The interaction between the local micro circuit activity and global processing to achieve the desired overall processing functionality observed, say in perception and action, attention, learning and memory
• Microcircuit architectures: networks of principal and inhibitory inter-neurons within and between lamina, columns, mini-columns, modules, areas and/or across areas in the brain and their functional roles in the network.
  • Neo-cortex
  • Hippocampus
  • Sensory and Motor Systems
• Cross-comparison of architectures from different brain areas
• Identified computations performed by each type of neuron in a network
• Identified modes of operation of a neuronal type and how they are related potentially to behaviour and cognition
• What synaptic plasticity rules are used

SUBMISSIONS and DEADLINES

Submission deadline: February 15, 2009 NEW Deadline!!

Review deadline: May 1, 2009

Author notification: May 2, 2009

Author's response: July 1

Publication by journal: ~September/October, 2009

Electronic submission instructions for the Neural Networks journal can be found under http://ees.elsevier.com/neunet/

Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Neural Models of Cortical Microcircuits".

CONTACT

Dr. Vassilis Cutsuridis
Department of Computing Science and Mathematics
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
SCOTLAND

Tel: +44 1786 467422
Fax: +44 1786 464551
Email: vcu_AT_cs.stir.ac.uk
Web: http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~vcu/