Abstract

In this presentation I will discuss recent findings from my lab that highlight how dendrites can provide important benefits to both biological and artificial neural networks [1,2,3]. Specifically, I will present recent modelling work that explores how dendritic nonlinearities coupled to the spatial organization of inputs can facilitate place cell formation [4]. I will also discuss our latest experimental findings, whereby spine turnover dynamics -i.e., gain, loss & clustering- are found to co-localize within dendritic hotspots. Modelling suggests that these hotspots provide a representational efficient mechanism for learning flexible behaviours under competing demands [5]. Finally, I will provide examples of how we use such dendritic properties to build Artificial/Recurrent Neural Networks with enhanced learning capabilities [6,7]. I will discuss how and why incorporating dendritic features in these models can lead to accurate and faster learning, resilience to overfitting and learning with orders of magnitude fewer trainable parameters.

Relevant literature:
[1] Poirazi and Papoutsi, Nat. Rev. Neurosc., 2020
[2] Makarov et al, Cur. Opinion in Neurobiol., 2023
[3] Pagkalos et al, Cur. Opinion in Neurobiol., 2024
[4] Tasciotti et al, accepted, Cell Reports, 2026
[5] Pandi et al, in prep.
[6] Chavlis and Poirazi, Nat. Communs., 2025
[7] Troullinou, Chavlis, Poirazi in prep. 

Biography

Panayiota (Yiota) Poirazi is a Research Director and head of the Dendrites Lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Heraklion, Crete. Her area of research covers Computational and Experimental Neuroscience and Bioinspired Machine Learning, focusing on how dendrites contribute to neuronal computations and underlie complex brain functions. She is a senior editor at eLife and Neuroscience, a member of ELLIS, EMBO and the Bernstein Network and is currently the Secretary General of FENS (Federation of European Neuroscience Societies). She is a recipient of many awards, including an Einstein Foundation fellowship, the Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, an ERC StG and the SNF-HFRI Theodoros Papazoglou award for securing an “A” in the 2023 ERC AdG call. She is the founder of the EMBO Workshop on Dendrites that takes place biennualy in Crete since 2016.