Availability of guidance
Mauricio Girardi-Schappo, PhD
Open Positions:
Master’s: 2
PhD: 2
We study the relationship between self-organization and excitability in many-body interacting systems, aiming to identify flaws in this relationship and propose ways to repair them. Numerous physical, biological, and social systems exhibit both of these characteristics, for example: neural networks and the brain, interacting ecosystems, social networks, and economic systems. The central problem is to understand the influence of the proximity to a critical point (where the system shows long-range correlations) on the properties of these systems, such as memory, information processing, information encoding, adaptability to changes, population stability, etc.
Through collaboration with researchers at the University of Ottawa and McGill University, we have access to experimental data from mice (spatial memory activity/electrophysiology), as well as humans with epilepsy and a control group (connectome extracted by functional/structural MRI, to use as a basis for brain simulations).
We use techniques from Statistical Physics, Non-linear Dynamics, and Complex Network Theory. We employ theoretical calculations, extensive computational simulations, and data analysis.
Research areas: theory and simulation of neural networks and self-organized criticality; analysis and simulation based on experimental data; development of tools and applications of the theories/analyses using Arduino.
Contact: 
| https://neurophysicslab.com
Some of our recent articles for further reading:
- Xu, M. Girardi-Schappo, J.-C. Béïque, A. Longtin, L. Maler (2024): Shortcutting from self-motion signals: quantifying trajectories and active sensing in an open maze. eLife 13:RP95764 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.95764.1
- -T. Trinh, M. Girardi-Schappo, J.-C. Béïque, A. Longtin, L. Maler (2023): Adaptive spike threshold dynamics associated with sparse spiking of hilar mossy cells are captured by a simple model. J Physiol, 601: 4397-4422. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP283728
- TTA Carvalho, AJ Fontenele, M Girardi-Schappo, T Feliciano, LAA Aguiar, TPL Silva, NAP de Vasconcelos, PV Carelli, M Copelli (2021): Subsampled Directed-Percolation Models Explain Scaling Relations Experimentally Observed in the Brain. Neural Circuits 14:576727. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2020.576727
- M Girardi-Schappo, F Fadaie, HM Lee, B Caldairou, V Sziklas, J Crane, BC Bernhardt, A Bernasconi, N Bernasconi (2021): Altered communication dynamics reflect cognitive deficits in temporal lobe epilepsy. Epilepsia, 62: 1022-1033. https://doi.org/10.1111/epi.16864
- M Girardi-Schappo, L Brochini, A Costa, T Carvalho, O Kinouchi (2020): Synaptic balance due to homeostatically self-organized quasicritical dynamics. Rev. Res., 2, 012042. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.012042
