The exploration-exploitation paradigm for the C.elegans brain growth

by Mr Vito Dichio (Sorbonne University)

Thursday 14 Sept 2023, 13:00 → 15:00 Europe/Stockholm

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The stochastic exploration of the configuration space and the exploitation of optimal (functional) states underlie many biological processes. The evolutionary dynamics stands out as a remarkable example. Here, we introduce a novel formalism that mimics evolution and encodes a general exploration-exploitation dynamics for biological networks. We then apply it to the brain wiring problem - i.e., the growth of the network of neurons and neuronal connections of a natural nervous system - focusing on the development of the C.elegans brain. We demonstrate that a parsimonious maxent description of the adult brain combined with our framework is able to track down the entire developmental trajectory.

 

Ref: Dichio, V., & De Vico Fallani, F. (2023). The exploration-exploitation paradigm for networked biological systems. arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.17300