ELENA PASTORELLI

PhD Graduate

PhD program:: XXXIII



Thesis title: Deep sleep and its cognitive effects - Slow wave activity and the learning and sleep cycle

Sleep is definitely an essential cerebral state for all living beings. The occurrence of sleep passed through the evolutionary sieve and is widespread in animal species. Sleep is known to be beneficial to cognitive and mnemonic tasks, while chronic sleep deprivation is detrimental. Indeed, young humans pass most of their time sleeping, and younger are the subjects that have to learn at faster rates. In adults, sleep deprivation is detrimental for cognition and it is one of the worst tortures that can be inflicted. Despite the importance of the phenomenon in relation with the cognitive effects, a complete understanding of its functions and underlying mechanisms is still lacking. Recent studies focused the attention on a specific phase of sleep in relation to cognition and learning: the deepest of physiological non-REM sleep stage in which specific phenomena like Slow Oscillations (SO) are the default emergent activity of the cortical network and are observed as an alternation between Down states (characterized by nearly silent neurons) and Up states (with intense neuronal activity). Among the contribution of this work, there is the building of fundamental instruments for the study of this phenomenon and of its interplay with learning, also thanks to the experimental context in which I am involved: the European Human Brain Project (HBP) and The Motor Control and Cognition Lab (MCC_lab) directed by Prof. Stefano Ferraina at Sapienza University. Basically, we developed an analysis tool for the extraction of salient feature (velocity, direction, planarity of the slow waves and other specific features) from the experimental recordings in vivo acquired with different methodologies (electrophysiology, calcium imaging, etc.), and simulations tools able to reproduce the behaviour of large portion of the cerebral cortex. To complement this activity, we built theoretical models and simulation tools able to reproduce the SWA and their effect on learning, demonstrating that such a cerebral state has a fundamental role in memory consolidation. The simulated outputs of these theoretical models are then analyzed with the same instruments used to analyze in vivo recorded data, allowing a faster and simpler comparison between experimental and synthetic data. In the end, I also had the chance to analyze signals recorded in vivo on monkeys during learning tasks, more specifically during the countermanding and the transitive inference tasks. I had not the possibility to verify the effect of sleep on these tasks, due to the impossibility of setting-up new experiments on animals in the last period, but the activity done, other then reporting interesting results, was preparatory to the study of the role of sleep on learning process and memory consolidation. Moreover, it gave me the possibility to work on data directly acquired in an experimental lab, that I consider a complementary activity essential for my scientific background.

Research products

  • 11573/1183970 - 2018 - Gaussian and Exponential Lateral Connectivity on Distributed Spiking Neural Network Simulation (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; SIMULA, FRANCESCO; BIAGIONI, ANDREA; CAPUANI, FABRIZIO; CRETARO, PAOLO; DE BONIS, GIULIA; MARTINELLI, MICHELE
  • 11573/1292554 - 2019 - Real-Time Cortical Simulations. Energy and Interconnect Scaling on Distributed Systems (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; MARTINELLI, MICHELE; BIAGIONI, ANDREA; CAPONE, CRISTIANO; CAPUANI, FABRIZIO; CRETARO, PAOLO; DE BONIS, GIULIA
  • 11573/1292264 - 2019 - Sleep-like slow oscillations improve visual classification through synaptic homeostasis and memory association in a thalamo-cortical model (01a Articolo in rivista)
    CAPONE, CRISTIANO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340386 - 2017 - Low latency network and distributed storage for next generation HPC systems: the ExaNeSt project (04c Atto di convegno in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340366 - 2017 - Latest generation interconnect technologies in APEnet+ networking infrastructure (04c Atto di convegno in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340380 - 2017 - The next generation of exascale-class systems: the ExaNeSt project (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340339 - 2018 - Next generation of Exascale-class systems: ExaNeSt project and the status of its interconnect and storage development (01a Articolo in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353509 - 2016 - GPU-based low-level trigger system for real-time Cherenkov ring fitting (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; TOSORATTO, LAURA
  • 11573/1353454 - 2017 - Power-efficient computing: experiences from the COSA project (01a Articolo in rivista)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353444 - 2017 - Graphical processors for HEP trigger systems (01a Articolo in rivista)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; SIMULA, FRANCESCO; VICINI, PAOLO
  • 11573/1353476 - 2017 - GPU real-time processing in NA62 trigger system (04c Atto di convegno in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353500 - 2016 - NaNet-10: a 10GbE network interface card for the GPU-based low-level trigger of the NA62 RICH detector (01a Articolo in rivista)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; TOSORATTO, LAURA
  • 11573/1353310 - 2019 - NaNet: a Reconfigurable PCIe Network Interface Card Architecture for Real-time Distributed Heterogeneous Stream Processing in the NA62 Low Level Trigger (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; MARTINELLI, MICHELE; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353317 - 2018 - Real-time heterogeneous stream processing with NaNet in the NA62 experiment (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353470 - 2017 - Reconfigurable PCI Express cards for low-latency data transport in HEP experiments (04c Atto di convegno in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1348738 - 2019 - Scaling of a large-scale simulation of synchronous slow-wave and asynchronous awake-like activity of a cortical model with long-range interconnections (01a Articolo in rivista)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; CAPONE, CRISTIANO; SIMULA, FRANCESCO; SANCHEZ VIVES, MARIA VICTORIA; DEL GIUDICE, PAOLO
  • 11573/1353332 - 2017 - Real-time track-less Cherenkov ring fitting trigger system based on Graphics Processing Units (01a Articolo in rivista)
    CRETARO, PAOLO; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340355 - 2018 - Large Scale Low Power Computing System: Status of Network Design in ExaNeSt and EuroExa Projects (02a Capitolo o Articolo)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1340361 - 2018 - The Brain on Low Power Architectures: Efficient Simulation of Cortical Slow Waves and Asynchronous States (02a Capitolo o Articolo)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1353330 - 2018 - The INFN COSA Project: Low-Power Computing and Storage (04b Atto di convegno in volume)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA; VICINI, PAOLO
  • 11573/1353352 - 2017 - Development of Network Interface Cards for TRIDAQ systems with the NaNet framework (02a Capitolo o Articolo)
    PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1491707 - 2020 - Thalamo-cortical spiking model of incremental learning combining perception, context and NREM-sleep-mediated noise-resilience (04d Abstract in atti di convegno)
    DE LUCA, CHIARA; CAPONE, CRISTIANO; PASTORELLI, ELENA; DE BONIS, GIULIA
  • 11573/1491656 - 2020 - Learning and sleep in a thalamo-cortical multi-area model (04f Poster)
    DE LUCA, CHIARA; CAPONE, CRISTIANO; PASTORELLI, ELENA; DE BONIS, GIULIA
  • 11573/1491772 - 2021 - Fast simulations of highly-connected spiking cortical models using GPUs (01a Articolo in rivista)
    DE LUCA, CHIARA; PASTORELLI, ELENA
  • 11573/1491776 - 2021 - Thalamo-cortical spiking model of incremental learning combining perception, context and NREM-sleep-mediated noise-resilience (01a Articolo in rivista)
    DE LUCA, CHIARA; CAPONE, CRISTIANO; PASTORELLI, ELENA; DE BONIS, GIULIA
  • 11573/1672591 - 2021 - Simulations approaching data: cortical slow waves in inferred models of the whole hemisphere of mouse (01a Articolo in rivista)
    CAPONE, CRISTIANO; DE LUCA, CHIARA; DE BONIS, GIULIA; PASTORELLI, ELENA; SIMULA, FRANCESCO; LUPO, COSIMO; PAVONE, ENEA FRANCESCO

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