ICTS

This school is part of the Programme in Biology between International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy and ICTS.

New experimental techniques are opening windows on biological mechanisms inside the cell and in the brain, making these systems accessible to quantitative investigation. These advances have shown the importance of the concerted interaction of many agents in producing overall behaviors, and call for an understanding of biological functions at the systemic level. The series of Winter Schools in Quantitative Systems Biology, initiated in 2012, responds to the need to provide physicists with a broad exposure to quantitative problems in the study of living systems.

The school is particularly targeted to young researchers, especially at the Ph.D and postdoc level who either work in this area or hope to do so.

The 2014 School will focus on Systems Neuroscience and cover different aspects of this rapidly developing field, such as:
• Neural coding and dynamics
• Connectomics
• Statistical inference in large neural datasets
• Optogenetics and gene expression in the brain
• Sensory systems: vision, olfaction, audition
• Computational neuroscience
• Synaptic plasticity, learning and memory
• Neuroscience of reward and decision making
• Spatial cognition
• Higher order cognitive processes

Series of lectures in these topics will be given by an array of distinguished speakers. Research seminars associated with the school will also provide a venue for scientific exchange at the cutting edge.