Cyriel Pennartz

Summary

Cyriel Marie Antoine Pennartz (born October 7, 1963) is a Dutch neuroscientist serving as professor and head of the Department of Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.[1] He is known for his research on memory, motivation, circadian rhythms, perception[2][3] and consciousness.[4][5] Pennartz’ work uses a multidisciplinary combination of techniques to understand the relationships between distributed neural activity and cognition, including in vivo electrophysiology and optical imaging, animal behavior and computational modelling.

Cyriel Pennartz
Born
Cyriel Marie Antoine Pennartz

(1963-10-07) 7 October 1963 (age 60)
Alma materUniversity of Amsterdam
Known forMemory,
circadian rhythm
perception
consciousness
AwardsUnilever Research Prize (1986)
Scientific career
FieldsSystems neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience
InstitutionsUniversity of Amsterdam
Doctoral advisorFernando Lopes da Silva

Career edit

Pennartz studied biology at Radboud University Nijmegen and University of Amsterdam with specializations in neurobiology, philosophy and computational neuroscience. He obtained his PhD degree in Neuroscience cum laude at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Fernando Lopes da Silva and Henk Groenewegen. His PhD project and follow-up research examined the physiology and plasticity of brain circuits involved in memory and motivation, focusing on the hippocampus and ventral striatum.[6][7][8][9][10]

He proceeded to work on computational models of reinforcement learning as a postdoctoral fellow in Computational Neuroscience at the Department of Physics of Computation of the California Institute of Technology with John Hopfield.[11][12]

In 1994 he initiated research on the cellular electrophysiology of the brain's circadian clock as tenured group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research.[13][14]

He uncovered replay of reward information in the ventral striatum during sleep, using in vivo ensemble recordings made with tetrode arrays, a technique he introduced to the Netherlands in collaboration with Bruce McNaughton and Carol Barnes at the University of Arizona (Tucson, U.S.A.)[15][16][17]

In 2003 he was appointed professor in Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam, where he currently leads a group of ~35 people. His main goal is to advance our understanding of multisensory perception,[18][19][20] learning and memory[21][22][23][24][25] and consciousness[26][27] by integrating experimental, theoretical and computational approaches to neuroscience. To achieve this, the group develops novel techniques for multi-area electrophysiology,[28] computer simulations of brain processes,[29] analytical tools[30][31] and causal interventions.[32] Pennartz published a theory on consciousness known as Neurorepresentationalism.[33][34][35][36][37] Using predictive processing principles,[38] this theory characterizes conscious experience as a multimodally rich, spatially encompassing representation of one's world, including one's own body. Recently his work has been ramifying into the clinical domain, studying disorders of consciousness and memory, and into neurotechnology, developing new methods to combat consequences of stroke.

Leadership in science and education; honors and awards edit

At the University of Amsterdam, he co-develops curricula and courses in Psychobiology (Bachelor), Biomedical Sciences (Bachelor), Brain and Cognitive Sciences (Master) and founded the Master track Cognitive Neurobiology and Clinical Neurophysiology. At the national level, he served for instance as co-leader of the National Science Agenda section on Brain, Behavior & Cognition (Neurolab.nl) with [Eveline Crone] and [Andrea Evers]. Since 2015, he joined the EU FET Flagship Human Brain Project (HBP)[39] through an open call, and continues to lead HBP's Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience Research. Representing these disciplines, he was elected member of the main governing body of HBP, the Scientific and Infrastructure Board. Pennartz received various awards, grants and honours, for example:

  • Unilever Research Prize (1986)
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, Human Frontier Science Program Organization (1993)
  • Program Grant, Human Frontier Science Program Organization (2001)
  • VICI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, 2004)
  • Program Grant, Senter-Novem (Ministry of Economic Affairs) "Mouse Phenomics" (2004)
  • Project Grant, Foundation for Technical Sciences (TTW) for novel neurotechnology (2007)
  • Human Brain Project grant, FET Flagship Project, Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience Open Call (2015) and grants in subsequent grant agreements (2017, 2020).

Bibliography edit

  • Pennartz, C. M. A. (2015) The Brain's Representational Power - On Consciousness and the Integration of Modalities. MIT press (382pp.). ISBN 9780262029315[40]
  • Pennartz, C. M. A. (2021) The Code of Consciousness. How the Brain Shapes Our Reality. (Dutch: De code van het bewustzijn. Hoe de hersenen onze werkelijkheid vormgeven). Prometheus (349 pp.). ISBN 9789044631913

References edit

  1. ^ "Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam". 16 June 2021.
  2. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (March 24, 2021). "Waar ben ik?" [Where am I?]. VPRO Gids (Dutch magazine) (Interview). Interviewed by Hans van Wetering. p. 30. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
  3. ^ Makri, Elina (May 28, 2021). "What makes people act irrationally?". Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Irish public broadcaster). Retrieved August 19, 2021.
  4. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (June 2, 2021). "Wij zijn meer dan ons brein" [We are more than our brain]. VPRO Gids (Dutch magazine) (Interview). Interviewed by Bennie Mols. p. 28. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
  5. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (June 19, 2021). "'Wij leven in een gezonde hallucinatie'" ['We live in a healthy hallucination']. NRC Handelsblad (Dutch newspaper) (Interview). Interviewed by Hendrik Spiering. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
  6. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; Groenewegen, H. J.; Lopes da Silva, F. H. (1994). "The nucleus accumbens as a complex of functionally distinct neuronal ensembles: an integration of behavioural, electrophysiological and anatomical data". Prog. Neurobiol. 42 (6): 719–761. doi:10.1016/0301-0082(94)90025-6. PMID 7938546. S2CID 27698282.
  7. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; Ameerun, R. F.; Lopes da Silva, F. H. (1993). "Synaptic plasticity in an in vitro slice preparation of the rat nucleus accumbens". Eur. J. Neurosci. 5 (2): 107–117. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.1993.tb00475.x. PMID 7903183. S2CID 38195220.
  8. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; Kitai, S. T. (1991). "Hippocampal inputs to identified neurons in an in vitro slice preparation of the rat nucleus accumbens: evidence for feed-forward inhibition". J. Neurosci. 11 (9): 2838–2847. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.11-09-02838.1991. PMC 6575237. PMID 1679123.
  9. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; Ito, R.; Verschure, P. F.; Battaglia, F. P.; Robbins, T.W. (2011). "The hippocampal-striatal axis in learning, prediction and goal-directed behavior". Trends Neurosci. 34 (10): 548–559. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2011.08.001. PMID 21889806. S2CID 10304061.
  10. ^ Taverna, S.; Van Dongen, Y. C.; Groenewegen, H. J.; Pennartz, C. M. (2004). "Direct physiological evidence for synaptic connectivity between medium-sized spiny neurons in rat nucleus accumbens in situ". J. Neurophysiol. 91 (3): 1111–1121. doi:10.1152/jn.00892.2003. PMID 14573550.
  11. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (1997). "Reinforcement learning by Hebbian synapses with adaptive thresholds". Neuroscience. 81 (2): 303–319. doi:10.1016/S0306-4522(97)00118-8. PMID 9300423. S2CID 42929297.
  12. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (1995). "The ascending neuromodulatory systems in learning by reinforcement: comparing computational conjectures with experimental findings". Brain Res Rev. 21 (3): 219–245. doi:10.1016/0165-0173(95)00014-3. PMID 8806015. S2CID 29093094.
  13. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; De Jeu, M. T.; Bos, N. P.; Schaap, J.; Geurtsen, A. M. (2002). "Diurnal modulation of pacemaker potentials and calcium current in the mammalian circadian clock". Nature. 416 (6878): 286–290. doi:10.1038/nature728. PMID 11875398. S2CID 4420946.
  14. ^ De Jeu, M.; Pennartz, C. (2002). "Circadian modulation of GABA function in the rat suprachiasmatic nucleus: excitatory effects during the night phase". J. Neurophysiol. 87 (2): 834–844. doi:10.1152/jn.00241.2001. PMID 11826050.
  15. ^ Lansink, C. S.; Goltstein, P. M.; Lankelma, J. V.; McNaughton, B. L.; Pennartz, C. M. (2009). "Hippocampus leads ventral striatum in replay of place-reward information". PLOS Biology. 7 (8): e1000173. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000173. PMC 2717326. PMID 19688032.
  16. ^ Pennartz, C. M.; Lee, E.; Verheul, J.; Lipa, P.; Barnes, C. A.; McNaughton, B. L. (2004). "The ventral striatum in off-line processing: ensemble reactivation during sleep and modulation by hippocampal ripples". J. Neurosci. 24 (29): 6446–6456. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0575-04.2004. PMC 6729862. PMID 15269254.
  17. ^ Lansink, C. S.; Goltstein, P. M.; Lankelma, J. V; Joosten, R. N. J. M. A.; McNaughton, B. L.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2008). "Preferential reactivation of motivationally relevant information in the ventral striatum". J. Neurosci. 28 (25): 6372–6382. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1054-08.2008. PMC 3844781. PMID 18562607.
  18. ^ Meijer, G. T.; Marchesi, P.; Mejias, J. F.; Montijn, J. S.; Lansink, C. S.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2020). "Neural correlates of multisensory detection behavior: comparison of primary and higher-order visual cortex". Cell Rep. 31 (6): 107636. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107636. hdl:11245.1/bb562c7a-68a7-411d-a4d4-f180b1806f85. PMID 32402272. S2CID 218635746.
  19. ^ Montijn, J. S.; Goltstein, P. M.; Pennartz, C. M. (2015). "Mouse V1 population correlates of visual detection rely on heterogeneity within neuronal response patterns". eLife. 4: e10163. doi:10.7554/eLife.10163. PMC 4739777. PMID 26646184.
  20. ^ Montijn, J. S.; Meijer, G. T.; Lansink, C. S.; Pennartz, C. M. (2016). "Population-level neural codes are robust to single-neuron variability from a multidimensional coding perspective". Cell Rep. 16 (9): 2486–2498. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2016.07.065. PMID 27545876.
  21. ^ Goltstein, P. M.; Coffey, E. B.; Roelfsema, P. R.; Pennartz, C. M. (2013). "In vivo two-photon Ca2+ imaging reveals selective reward effects on stimulus-specific assemblies in mouse visual cortex". J. Neurosci. 33 (28): 11540–11555. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1341-12.2013. PMC 6618686. PMID 23843524.
  22. ^ Goltstein, P. M.; Meijer, G. T.; Pennartz, C. M. (2018). "Conditioning sharpens the spatial representation of rewarded stimuli in mouse primary visual cortex". eLife. 7: e37683. doi:10.7554/eLife.37683. PMC 6141231. PMID 30222107.
  23. ^ Daselaar, S. M.; Huijbers, W.; De Jonge, M.; Goltstein, P. M.; Pennartz, C.M. (2010). "Experience-dependent alterations in conscious resting state activity following perceptuomotor learning". Neurobiol. Learn. Mem. 93 (3): 422–427. doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2009.12.009. PMID 20045076. S2CID 2797255.
  24. ^ Lansink, C. S.; Jackson, J. C.; Lankelma, J. V.; Ito, R.; Robbins, T. W.; Everitt, B. J.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2012). "Reward cues in space: commonalities and differences in neural coding by hippocampal and ventral striatal ensembles". J. Neurosci. 32 (36): 12444–12459. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0593-12.2012. PMC 3492752. PMID 22956836.
  25. ^ Van Wingerden, M.; Vinck, M.; Lankelma, J. V.; Pennartz, C. M. (2010). "Learning-associated gamma-band phase-locking of action-outcome selective neurons in orbitofrontal cortex". J. Neurosci. 30 (30): 10025–10038. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0222-10.2010. PMC 6633375. PMID 20668187.
  26. ^ Goltstein, P. M.; Montijn, J. S.; Pennartz, C. M. (2015). "Effects of isoflurane anesthesia on ensemble patterns of Ca2+ activity in mouse V1: reduced direction selectivity independent of increased correlations in cellular activity". PLOS ONE. 10 (2): e0118277. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1018277G. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118277. PMC 4338011. PMID 25706867.
  27. ^ Olcese, U.; Bos., J. J.; Vinck, M.; Lankelma, J. V.; Van Mourik-Donga, L. B.; Schlumm, F.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2016). "Spike-based functional connectivity in cerebral cortex and hippocampus: loss of global connectivity is coupled to preservation of local connectivity during non-REM sleep". J. Neurosci. 36 (29): 7676–7692. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4201-15.2016. PMC 6705553. PMID 27445145.
  28. ^ Bos, J. J.; Vinck, M.; Van Mourik-Donga, L. A.; Jackson, J. C.; Witter, M. P.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2017). "Perirhinal firing patterns are sustained across large spatial segments of the task environment". Nat. Commun. 8: 15602. Bibcode:2017NatCo...815602B. doi:10.1038/ncomms15602. PMC 5458559. PMID 28548084.
  29. ^ Dora, S.; Pennartz, C.; Bohte, S. (2018). "A Deep Predictive Coding Network for Inferring Hierarchical Causes Underlying Sensory Inputs". Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 11141. pp. 457–467. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01424-7_45. ISBN 978-3-030-01423-0. S2CID 52913055.
  30. ^ Vinck, M.; Battaglia, F. P.; Womelsdorf, T.; Pennartz, C. (2012). "Improved measures of phase-coupling between spikes and the local field potential". J. Comput. Neurosci. 33 (1): 53–75. doi:10.1007/s10827-011-0374-4. PMC 3394239. PMID 22187161.
  31. ^ Vinck, M.; Oostenveld, R.; Van Wingerden, M.; Battaglia, F.; Pennartz, C. M. (2011). "An improved index of phase synchronization for electrophysiological data in the presence of volume-conduction, noise and sample-size bias". NeuroImage. 55 (4): 1548–1565. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.01.055. PMID 21276857. S2CID 4933951.
  32. ^ Van Wingerden, M.; Vinck, M.; Tijms, V.; Ferreira, I. R. S.; Jonker, A. J.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2012). "NMDA receptors control cue-outcome selectivity and plasticity of orbitofrontal firing patterns during associative stimulus-reward learning". Neuron. 76 (4): 813–825. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2012.09.039. PMID 23177965. S2CID 4065341.
  33. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (2015). The brain's representational power - on consciousness and the integration of modalities. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262029315.
  34. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (2018). "Consciousness, Representation, Action: the importance of being goal-directed". Trends Cogn. Sci. 22 (2): 137–153. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.10.006. PMID 29233478. S2CID 3012806.
  35. ^ Olcese, U.; Oude Lohuis, M. N.; Pennartz, C. M. A. (2018). "Sensory processing across conscious and nonconscious brain states: from single neurons to distributed networks for inferential representation". Front. Syst. Neurosci. 12: 49. doi:10.3389/fnsys.2018.00049. PMC 6193318. PMID 30364373.
  36. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (2009). "Identification and integration of sensory modalities: neural basis and relation to consciousness". Conscious. Cogn. 18 (3): 718–739. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2009.03.003. PMID 19409812. S2CID 38558476.
  37. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A. (2021). De code van het bewustzijn (The code of consciousness; in Dutch). Prometheus. ISBN 9789044631913.
  38. ^ Pennartz, C. M. A.; Dora, S.; Muckli, L.; Lorteije, J. A. M. (2019). "Towards a unified view on pathways and functions of neural recurrent processing". Trends Neurosci. 42 (9): 589–603. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2019.07.005. hdl:11245.1/de94fa4b-af61-422b-be87-0e6a98b29515. PMID 31399289. S2CID 199518049.
  39. ^ Amunts, K.; Knoll, A. C.; Lippert, T.; Pennartz, C. M. A.; Ryvlin, P.; Destexhe, A.; Jirsa, V. K.; D'Angelo, E.; Bjaalie, J. G. (2019). "The Human Brain Project - synergy between neuroscience, computing, informatics, and brain-inspired technologies". PLOS Biology. 17 (7): e30000344. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000344. PMC 6625714. PMID 31260438.
  40. ^ Deroy, O.; Fairhurst, M. (December 26, 2016). "Reviewed: Pennartz, C. M. A. The Brain's representational power: On consciousness and the integration of modalities". Perception. 46 (5): 638–639. doi:10.1177/0301006616684259. S2CID 220051993. Retrieved August 19, 2021.

External links edit

  • VICI (2003)
  • HBP, EBRAINS
  • Neurolab.nl
  • MIT Press - Praise for The Brain's Representational Power (2015)
  • Prometheus - Praise for The Code of Consciousness (2021)
  • Templeton World Charity Foundation (2021)
  • Interview relating to The Code of Consciousness on NPO Radio 1 (Dutch public radio station)
  • Interview relating to The Code of Consciousness on BNR Nieuwsradio (Dutch language international radio station)