Dr. Danko Nikolić
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
Deutschordenstraße 46
D-60528 Frankfurt/Main
Tel.: +49(0)6996769-736
Fax: +49(0)6996769-327
Why brain?
The brain is like a household appliance. You can wonder how it works. You can disassemble it to see what it consists of, and you can take the challenge of assembling it back. In brain research we disassemble, by doing experiments, and assemble back, through theories.
When reassembling an appliance, an amateur is often left with an extra screw or two, or a spring of some sort, or even with parts of unidentifiable shapes. These leftovers make one wonder whether an engineering error has been made or whether the manufacturing process went wrong when, mistakenly, unneeded components were packed into the device, which--as you have just proven--can work without them. In brain science, everyone is an assembling amateur. The theoretical process leaves us regularly with a mystifying amount of non-fitting empirical results, coming from both behavior and anatomy, and neither of which is plug-able or squeezable into the presumed mechanism of brain function.
This would be like disassembling a modern high-tech multi-functional refrigerator and putting it back into a simple bottle opener. The result may have a use of a sort, but the nearby-laying pile of the left over parts speaks a story too; Something must have gone terribly wrong.
The bottom line is that understanding the brain function is difficult. No one has yet been able to make the pile of the used parts bigger than the other one made of the parts without an obvious function. In other words, any brain theory ever proposed with the ambition to explain how physical processes produce mental capabilities ignored, if not contradicted, more empirical findings than it agreed with.
But this situation of modern neuroscience is nothing to be afraid of or discouraged by. Actually, we live in the time of the most desirable state of affairs. Anyone who likes peeking and poking, thinking, puzzle solving, disassembling and assembling should be glad that the issue has not been settled yet. This way, thousands of neuroscientists around the world are given a chance to work on the most magnificent scientific problem imaginable to human mind while, in the same time, doing something good for their societies and the mankind in general. We should enjoy the mystery while it lasts.
--
My contributions to that problem revolve around vision, and involve mostly i) multi-channel electrophysiology - for allowing direct access to the dynamics of neuronal networks, and ii) psychophysics - for its elegance.
Research topics:
 1) Temporal coding by relative spiking delays
2) Surround modulation in visual cortex and neuronal synchronisation
3) Relationship between visual attention, visual WM and visual LTM
4) The nature of synaesthesia
5) The iconic brain
6) Applied scientific epistemology
Media attention on synaesthesia research:
 New Scientist
Haben Sie "Musikgeschmack"? Sind Sie ein Synästhet?
"Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst..."?
Hearing Colors And Seeing Sounds: How Real Is Synesthesia?
 Vernetzung der Sinne (erschienen bei UNI-KLINIK aktuell 1/07)
Software:
"Active STIM - Visual stimulation software"
Danko Nikolić, short CV
Journal Publications (ordered chronologically)
Jurjut, O.F., D. Nikolić, G. Pipa, W. Singer, D. Metzler, R.C. Mureşan (2009)
A color-based visualization technique for multi-electrode spike trains.
Journal of Neurophysiology, 102: 3766-3778.
 
Uhlhaas, P.J., G. Pipa, B. Lima, L. Melloni, S. Neuenschwander, D. Nikolić and W. Singer (2009)
Neural synchrony in cortical networks: history, concept and current status.
Frontiers in INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE 3:17. doi:10.3389/neuro.07.017.2009
Havenith, M.N.*, A. Zemmar*, S. Yu, S.M. Baudrexel, W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2009)
Measuring sub-millisecond delays in spiking activity with millisecond time-bins.
Neuroscience Letters, 450: 296-300
*contributed equally
Uhlhaas, P.J., C. Haenschel, D. Nikolić and W. Singer (2008)
The role of oscillations and synchrony in cortical networks and their putative relevance for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34: 927-943
Nikolić, D., V.V. Moca, W. Singer and R.C. Mureşan (2008)
Properties of multivariate data investigated by fractal dimensionality.
Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 172(1):27-33
Pipa, G., D.W. Wheeler, W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2008)
NeuroXidence: A non-parametric test on Excess or Deficiency of Joint-Spike Events.
Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 25: 64-88
Mureşan R.C., O.F. Jurjuţ, V.V. Moca, W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2008)
The Oscillation Score: An Efficient Method for Estimating Oscillation Strength in Neuronal Activity.
Journal of Neurophysiology, 99(3):1333-1353
Yu, S., D. Huang, W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2008)
A Small World of Neuronal Synchrony.
Cerebral Cortex, 18(12):2891-2901
Mayer, J., R. Bittner, D. Linden and D. Nikolić (2007)
Attentional demand influences strategies for encoding into visual working memory.
Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 3(4), 429-448
Nikolić, D. and W. Singer (2007)
Creation of visual long-term memory.
Perception & Psychophysics, 69: 904-912
Fries, P., D. Nikolić and W. Singer (2007)
The gamma cycle
TRENDS in Neurosciences, 30(7):309-316
Nikolić, D., P. Lichti and W. Singer (2007)
Color-opponency in synesthetic experiences.
Psychological Science, 18(6):481-486.
Mayer J.S., R.A. Bittner, D. Nikolić, C. Bledowski, R. Goebel and D.E.J. Linden (2007)
Common neural substrates for visual working memory and attention.
Neuroimage 36(2): 441-53
Nikolić, D. (2007)
Non-parametric detection of temporal order across pairwise measurements of time delays.
Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 22 (1); 5-19
Biederlack, J., M. Castelo-Branco, S. Neuenschwander, D.W. Wheeler, W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2006)
Brightness induction: Rate enhancement and neuronal synchronization as complementary codes.
Neuron 52, 1073-1083
Schneider, G., M.N. Havenith and D. Nikolić (2006)
Spatio-temporal structure in large neuronal networks detected from cross correlation.
Neural Computation, 18(10):2387-2413
Schneider, G. and D. Nikolić (2006)
Detection and assessment of near-zero delays in neuronal spiking activity.
Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 2005, 152(1-2):97-106
Nikolić, D. and S.D. Gronlund (2002)
A tandem random walk model of the SAT paradigm: Response times and accumulation of evidence.
British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 55, 263-288
Nikolić, D. (1999)
Results on chaotic dimensionality of hand movements support processing capacity definition by relational complexity.
Commentary on: Halford, G., Wilson, W. H. & Phillips, S.: Processing capacity defined by relational complexity: Implications for comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 21, 842-843
Durso, F.T., C.A. Hackworth, T.R. Truitt, J.M. Crutchfield, D. Nikolić and C.A. Manning (1998)
Situation Awareness as a Predictor of Performance for En Route Air Traffic Controllers.
Air Traffic Control Quarterly, 6, 1-20
Nikolić, D. (1998)
Filling in the explanatory gap or jumping over it. Commentaries on Cortical Activity and the Explanatory Gap by John G. Taylor.
Consciousness and Cognition, 7, 196-201
Other peer-reviewed publications (conference proceedings and book chapters)
Buzsáki, G., Kreiter A., Lansner A., Lücke J., Martin K., Moghaddam B.,
Moser M-B., Nikolić D., Sejnowski T. (in press)
Coordination in Circuits.
In: Dynamic Coordination in the Brain: From Neurons to Mind, edited by C.
von der Malsburg, W. A. Phillips, and W. Singer. 2010. Strüngmann Forum
Report, vol. 5. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nikolić, D. (2009)
Is synaesthesia actually ideaestesia? An inquiry into the nature of the phenomenon.
Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia, Science & Art, Granada, Spain, April 26-29, 2009
D. Nikolić (2009)
Model this! Seven empirical phenomena missing in the models of cortical oscillatory dynamics.
Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, IJCNN 2009
Moca, V.V., D. Nikolić and R.C. Mureşan (2008)
Real and Modeled Spike Trains: Where Do They Meet?
In: 18th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN2008, vol. 5164 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 488 - 497
Mureşan, R.C., W. Singer and D. Nikolić (2008)
The InfoPhase Method or How to Read Neurons with Neurons.
In:18th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN2008, vol. 5164 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 498-- 507
Schneider, G. and D. Nikolić (2008)
A stochastic framework for the quantification of synchronous oscillation in neuronal networks.
Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Computational Systems Biology, WCSB 2008, pp. 169-172
Nikolić, D.*, S. Häusler*, W. Singer and W. Maass (2007)
Temporal dynamics of information content carried by neurons in the primary visual cortex.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 19
*contributed equally
Nikolić, D. (2000)
A dual processing theory of brain and mind: Where is the limited processing capacity coming from?
In: Proceedings from the international conference on complex systems on Unifying themes in complex systems. pp. 385 - 395
Durso, F.T., C.A. Hackworth, T.R. Truitt, J.M. Crutchfield, D. Nikolić and C.A. Manning (1997)
Does a controller's situation awareness predict performance?
In Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Columbus, OH.
Durso, F.T., T.R. Truitt, C.A. Hackworth, J.M. Crutchfield, D. Nikolić, P.M. Moertl, D. Ohrt and C.A. Manning (1995)
Expertise and Chess: Comparing situation Awareness Methodologies.
In Garland, D. and Endsley, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Experimental Analysis and Measurement of Situation Awareness, pp. 295-303
|
|
|
|
|
|
