Computational logic and circuit mechanisms of large-scale cortical dynamics during perceptual decisions
Recent literature suggests that decision-making computations are distributed across the cortex, but differently so depending on task demands. But what mechanisms orchestrate task-dependent computation? How do specific cognitive processes distinctly engage distributed dynamics? I will discuss my research aimed at answering these questions. First, I will present evidence that task-dependent, heterogeneous cholinergic input from the basal forebrain to the cortex is specifically required to support a mode of distributed cortical dynamics that enables the accumulation of sensory evidence. I will then introduce a new decision-making task we have developed to disentangle different cognitive processes occurring over flexible timescales and show data suggesting that these distinct processes are disentangled at the level of cortex-wide dynamics.
Bio: Lucas Pinto is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. He obtained his M.D. from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2006. He then did an M.S. in physiology at the same university. Lucas got his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014, working in Yang Dan’s laboratory. He moved to the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in 2015 for his post-doctoral research with David Tank and Carlos Brody and started his lab in 2021 at Northwestern University before moving to University of Chicago in the fall of 2025. Lucas is broadly interested in neural mechanisms underlying cognition, both at the local circuit level and in terms of large-scale interactions between different brain areas.