Tuesday 9 June 2009 , at 18:00, we are honoured to host at the CRI Prof. Eshel Ben Jacob, of the Physics department, Tel-Aviv University, presenting his work on "Learning from bacteria about information processing"

Prof. Ben Jacob is the holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, fellow of the American Physical Society and former President of the Israel Physical Society. Scientific American magazine placed his work on the creation of a type of organic memory chip on its list of the year's 50 most significant scientific discoveries...

Abstract

Bacteria, the first and most fundamental of all organisms, lead rich social life in complex hierarchical communities. Collectively, they gather information from the environment, learn from past experience, and take decisions. Bacteria do not store genetically all the information required for efficient responding to all possible environmental conditions. To solve the new encountered problems (challenges) posed by the environment, they first asses the problem via collective sensing, recall stored information of past experience and then execute distributed information processing of the 109-12 bacteria in the colony thus turning the colony into super-brain. Super-brain, because the billions of bacteria in the colony use sophisticated communication strategies to link the intracellular computation networks of each bacterium (including signaling path ways of billions of molecules) into a network of networks. I will then show illuminating movies of swarming intelligence of live bacteria in which they solve optimization problems that are beyond what we, human being, can solve with our most powerful computers. This will lead me to a discussion about the special nature of bacteria computational principles in comparison to our Turing Algorithm computational principles. If time will permit, I will show that we can learn from the bacteria about our brain. In particular that the crucial role of the neglected other side of the brain - distributed information processing of the astrocytes.

next : recent publications

Recent publications

2009

1:Process entanglement as a neuronal anchorage mechanism to rough surfaces.
Sorkin R, Greenbaum A, David-Pur M, Anava S, Ayali A, Ben-Jacob E, Hanein Y.
Nanotechnology. 2009 Jan 7;20(1):15101. Epub 2008 Dec 5.

2: The regulative role of neurite mechanical tension in network development.
Anava S, Greenbaum A, Ben Jacob E, Hanein Y, Ayali A.
Biophys J. 2009 Feb 18;96(4):1661-70.

3: Deadly competition between sibling bacterial colonies.
Be'er A, Zhang HP, Florin EL, Payne SM, Ben-Jacob E, Swinney HL.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jan 13;106(2):428-33. Epub 2009 Jan 7.

4: Engineered neuronal circuits shaped and interfaced with carbon nanotube microelectrode arrays.
Shein M, Greenbaum A, Gabay T, Sorkin R, David-Pur M, Ben-Jacob E, Hanein Y. Biomed Microdevices. 2009 Apr;11(2):495-501.

5: Multimodal encoding in a simplified model of intracellular calcium signaling.
De Pittà M, Volman V, Levine H, Ben-Jacob E.
Cogn Process. 2009 Feb;10 Suppl 1:S55-70. Epub 2008 Nov 22. Erratum in: Cogn Process. 2009 Feb;10 Suppl 1:S127.

2008

Process entanglement as a neuronal anchorage mechanism to rough surfaces
Raya Sorkin, Alon Greenbaum,Moshe David-Pur, Sarit Anava, Amir Ayali, Eshel Ben-Jacob and Yael Hanein. Nanotechnology 20 (2009) 015101 (8pp)

Multimodal encoding in a simplified model of intracellular calcium signaling
Maurizio De Pitta, Vladislav Volman, Herbert Levine and Eshel Ben-Jacob. Cogn Process Publisged on line 22 November 2008

Carbon nanotube micro electrodes for neuronal interfocing.
E. Ben-Jacob & Y. Hanein. J. Mater. Chem., 2008, 18, 5181-5186

Social behavior of bacteria: from physics to complex organization
E. Ben-Jacob. Eur. Phys. J. B 65, 315-322 (2008)

Management of synchronized network activity by highly active neurons
Mark Shein, Vladislav Volman, Nadav Raichman, Yael Hanein and Eshel Ben-Jacob1. Phys. Biol. 5 (2008).

"Spatio-temporal motifs 'remembered' in neuronal networks following profound hypothermia"
Liel Rubinsky, Nadav Raichman, Jacob Lavee, Hanan Frenk and Eshel Ben-Jacob. Neural Networks (online publication 10.1016/j.neunet.2008.06.008) (2008).

Genome Holography: Deciphering Function-Form Motifs from Gene Expression Data
Asaf Madi, Yonatan Friedman, Dalit Roth, Tamar Regev, Sharron Bransburg-Zabary, Eshel Ben Jacob. Plos ONE, vol 3 Issue 7(2008).

Coexistence of amplitude and frequency modulations in intracellular calcium dynamics
Maurizio De Pitta', Vladislav Volman, Herbert Levine, Giovanni Pioggia, Danilo De Rossi, and Eshel Ben-Jacob. Physical Review E 77, 030903(2008)

Social behavior of bacteria: from physics to complex organization
Eshel Ben Jacob .The European Physical Journal B (2008)

Pulsating-gliding transtion in the dynamics of levitating liquid nitrogen droplets.
Alexey Snezhko, Eshel Ben Jacob and Igor Aranson. New Journal of Physics 10 (2008) 043034 (12pp)

Identifying repeating motifs in the activation of synchronized bursts in cultured neuronal networks.
Nadav Raichman, Eshel Ben-Jacob. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 170 (2008)96-110

Emergence of agent Swarm Migration and vortex formation through inelatic Collisions
D.Grossman, I. S. Aranson, E. Ben Jacob. New Journal of Physics 10 (2008)

Swarming and Complex pattern Formation Paenibacillus vortex studied by imaging and tracking celles
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Colin J. Ingham. BMC Microbiology 8:36 (2008)

2007

Detecting and localizing the foci in human epileptic seizures
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Stefano Boccaletti, Anna Pomyalov and Itamar Procaccia and Vernon L. Towle CHAOS 17, 043113 (2007)

Study of hypothermia on cultured neuronal networks using multi-electrode arrays
Liel Rubinsky, Nadav Raichman, Itay Baruchi, Mark Shein, Jacob Lavee, Hanan Frenk, Eshel Ben-Jacob. Journal of Neuroscience Methods 160 (2007) 288-293

"Electro-chemical and biological properties of carbon nanotube based multi-electrode arrays."
Gabay, T., Ben-David, M., Kalifa, I., Sorkin, R., R. Abrams, Z., Ben-Jacob, E. And Yael Hanein. Nanotechnology, 18, 035201-035206 (2007).
Mapping and assessment of epileptogenic foci using frequency-entropy templates
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Itai Doron, Tomer Gazit, Eden Rephaeli, Oren Sagher and Vernon L. Towle. PHYSICAL REVIEW E 76, 051903 2007

Correlated phenotypic transitions to competence in bacterial colonies
I. Hecht, E. Ben-Jacob, & H. Levine, Phys. Rev. E 76, 040901(R)(2007)
The Astrocyte as aGatekeeper of Synaptic I-nformation Transfer
Vladislav Volman, Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine. Neural Computation 19, (2007) 303-326

Calcium and Synaptic dynamics underlying rererberatory activity in Neuronal networks.
Vladislav Volman Richard C Gerkin, Pak-Ming Lau, Eshel Ben-Jacob1, and Guo-Qiang Bi.Phys. Biol. 4 (2007) 91-103

Towards Neuro-Memory-Chip: Imprinting multiple memories in cultured neural networks
Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob. PHYSICAL REVIEW E 75, 050901.R (2007)
Compact self-wiring in cultured neural networks
R Sorkin, T Gabay, P Blinder, D Baranes, E Ben-Jacob and Y Hanein. Journal of neural Engineering (2007)
The Effect of rf-irradiation on electrochemical_deposition
Eshel Ben Jacob, Yakir Aharonov, Lior Miller, Yael Katsir. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 154 4 D249-D259 2007