The upcoming Flux Congress 2024 will feature a thought-provoking symposium titled "Developmental Changes in Cortical Excitation-Inhibition Balance through Adolescence and Functional Implications for Cognition." This session will explore how shifts in the brain’s excitation-inhibition (E-I) balance during adolescence affect neural dynamics and cognition, offering new insights into one of the most transformative stages of brain development.
Below is an interview with the Andrew Westbrook, the Chair of this symposium.
What is your symposium about?
Adolescence brain development includes multiple changes in cortical structure and function including the pruning of excitatory synapses and the maturation of inhibitory interneurons which collectively shift the balance between excitation and inhibition. This shift in inhibition versus excitation has profound implications for neural dynamics and behavior across a diversity of timescales. Given the inherently multi-scale nature of these changes, our symposium will consider a diversity of methods including multi-modal brain imaging in humans to capture scales from sub-seconds to years, and circuit manipulations in rodents.
Who are the speakers? What diverse viewpoints do they bring?
This symposium will showcase a range of research methods and viewpoints from a diverse group of experts:
- Adriana Caballero will explore how manipulations of parvalbumin interneurons affect higher-order cognition in rodent models, offering insights into the cellular mechanisms underlying adolescent brain changes.
- Bart Larsen will present research combining MRI with computational modeling to infer shifts in cortical E-I balance across development. His work connects large-scale brain imaging with developmental changes in neural balance.
- Ashley Parr will examine the role of dopamine in shaping GABA and glutamate signaling, presenting data from ultra high-field (7T) MRI and MR spectroscopy. Her research highlights the neurochemical interactions critical for understanding adolescent brain development.
- Andrew Westbrook will focus on the emergent dynamics of brain activity linked to E-I balance and brain criticality through EEG data, emphasizing the brain’s dynamic properties during adolescence.
What was your goal in organizing this symposium?
The notion of “E-I balance” is unfortunately expansive, evoking a diversity of constructs, theories, and methods. Construct confusion can hinder interdisciplinary discussion and engender uncertainty about the broader implications of research findings in specific sub-domains. We wanted to tackle this problem head on with an eye towards integrating diverse findings on E-I balance, brain function, and cognition towards a normative model of adolescent brain development.
What else are you looking forward to at Flux, and/or around Baltimore?
Good food, good company, and good science!
The "Developmental Changes in Cortical Excitation-Inhibition Balance through Adolescence and Functional Implications for Cognition" symposium will undoubtedly be a highlight of Flux2024, offering attendees the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how the adolescent brain transforms and its long-lasting impacts on cognition and behavior.
Article Written By
Andrew Lynn
Comcom Member
Across the first decade of life, most children develop the ability to focus on a complex goal, such as coloring a picture or listening to a teacher recite the alphabet. My goal is to understand how children’s brains change as they develop this ability, and why some children find these goals especially challenging. To answer this broad question, my research focuses on two areas of interest. First, I use the visual system to test how different aspects of children’s visual environments influence their attention abilities. I have found that children’s attention depends on environmental features such as luminance, color, and motion. I have also found that the connection between brain regions that support vision and attention develop differently in autistic children compared to typically developing children. Second, I study how positive and negative experiences of both parents and children as well as the financial and educational resources within the home and across society shape brain development, how children think, and their academic achievement. My research shows that the experiences of both parents and children are related to how their children’s brain develop and their academic achievement. My future research will integrate these two research areas to test how parent’s and children’s shared and unique environments and experiences affect brain development and set the foundation for children’s academic achievement.