Wolf, Fred, Prof. Dr.

Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

• Head of the Research Group ‘Theoretical Neurophysics’, Department of Nonlinear Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, since 2004


• Visiting Scolar, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara ( USA ), 2001, 2003, 2004


• Research Associate, Max-Planck-Institut für Strömungsforschung, Göttingen, 2001-2004


• Amos de Shalit Fellow, Racah Institute of Physics and Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem (Israel), 2000


• Dr. phil. nat., J.W.Goethe Universität, Frankfurt , 1999

Major Research Interests

Theoretical neuroscience and nonlinear dynamics

Dynamics and synchronization in cortical neural networks

Function and development of the visual cortex

Sensory processing in the auditory system

The brains of humans and animals arguably are among the most complex systems in nature. Over the past decade, theoretical neuroscience - the use of quantitative theories, mathematical modelling and advanced quantitative data analysis methods for the study of brain function - has started to provide powerfull new approaches for understanding the neuronal basis of preception, learning, memory, and other higher brain functions. This is because, even during the neuronal processing of the most elementary sensory stimulus large ensembles of interacting nerve cells distributed throughout the brain are activated, the collective operations of which are often hard to understand by means of purely qualitative reasoning.

The primary focus of our research in theoretical neuroscience is self-organisation in the dynamics of cortical networks. In particular, we have developed novel approches to model and predict the dynamics and and neuronal plasticity of the visual cortex. To quantitatively connect theory and experiment in this system, we recently also designed methods that enable to quantify the organization of visual cortical functional architecture with high precision. Another important focus of our work is the mathematical analysis of the dynamics of large and complex networks of pulse-coupled neuron models. The concepts and tools for the representation of the dynamics of cortical circuits developed enable a rational and transparent design of models of higher cortical functions such as the processes underlying perceptual learning phenomena.


Homepage Department/Research Group

http://www.chaos.gwdg.de/



Selected Recent Publications

• Tchumatchenko T, Malyshev A, Geisel T, Volgushev M, Wolf F. Phys Rev Lett. 2010 104(5):058102. 2010 Correlations and synchrony in threshold neuron models


• Junek S, Kludt E, Wolf F, Schild D. Olfactory Coding with Patterns of Response Latencies. Neuron. 2010 67(5):872-884


• Baranauskas G, Mukovskiy A, Wolf F, Volgushev M. Neuroscience. 2010 167(4):1070-90 The determinants of the onset dynamics of action potentials in a computational model


• Tchumatchenko T, Geisel T, Volgushev M, Wolf F. Front Comput Neurosci. 2010 4:1. Signatures of synchrony in pairwise count correlations


• Kaschube M, Schnabel M, Wolf F, Löwel S (2009) Interareal coordination of columnar architectures during visual cortical development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106: 17205-17210


• Reichl L, Lowel S, Wolf F (2009) Pinwheel Stabilization by Ocular Dominance Segregation. Physical Review Letters 102: 208101