PhD THESIS ANTICIPATED SYNCHRONIZATION IN NEURONAL CIRCUITS Fernanda Selingardi Matias Recife - PE, Brazil 2014 To mygrandparentsMagda,Tauil,Socorro,Matiasandmy greatgrandmotherHelena. Acknowledgements Iwishtoexpressmygratitudetoeveryonewhocontributedtomakethisthesisareality. At first Iwouldliketo thanksincerelymyadvisors,MauroCopelliandClaudio Mirasso,fortheir enthusiasticguidanceallalongmyPhD. Theyhadalways goodideas forfurtherinvestigations and gave me a lot of their time. I have learned a lot from them and I will never thank them enough. I would also liketo thank my co-adviserPedro Carelli for his friendship, forshowing mehow amazing experimentscould beand for helpingmein my first steps in dataanalysis. It was apleasuretobesupervisedby this3-professorsmotif. Iamsograteful fortheopportunity theygavemetoworkinthisamazingproject,togiveseminarsindifferentplaces,tovisitgreat labs,to attendto veryimportantneurosciencecourses and tospendoneyear inPalma. For great contributions of our collaborators, I thank Dr. Steven Bressler for providing the dataanalyzed in chapter 5 and for his great suggestionsto improveour paper; Leonardo Gollo for teaching me the details of the simulations presented in Chapters 4 and 5 and for fruitful discussionevenviaskype;KlausStiefel forproposingtheexperimentdescribed inSection 2.6 andMarylkaUusisaariforkindlyprovidethedataanalyzedinthissection;ClaudiaClopathfor helping mewith the resultspresented in Section 6.3, which were part ofmy project during the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course; Jordi Zamora-Munt for the ideas presented in Section 2.7.1;VictorEguíluz,ThomasJünglingand HideyukiKatofor helpfuladvices. I would like to thank Reynaldo Pinto, Leonardo Maia, John Rinzel, Wulfram Gerstner and Yves Frégnac for letting me visit their labs and talk to their groups. I also want to thank the colleagues thatIhavemetduringsuch visits,conferences and schoolsforrefreshing myideas, in particular Quel, Bryan, Thiago Mosqueiro, Megumi. I am very grateful to all my friends from Recife and Palma for advices, discussions,journal clubs, nicelunches and coffee breaks. They made this journey more pleasant. In particular, I want to thank Bruno, Nando, Tiago, Vladimir, Alfredo, Romero, João, Thaís, Deni, Fábio, Eglânio, Hugo, Leo, Tiaguinho, as well as Neus,MiguelSoriano, MiguelEscalona,Luis,Pedro, Konstantinand Adrián. Ialsowantto thank Prof. Marcelo Cairrão and Ubirakitan for the enthusiasm with the recent collaboration andIgorforhispatienceduringtheexperimentsIhaveattended. Moreover,Iamreallyindebted to allthepeopleresponsibleforthefavorable environmentconditionsat UFPE and IFISC. My special thanks to Alexsandra, Hilda, Aziel and Claudésio, as well as to Rubén, Antònia and Marta. Addtionally,Ithankallthemembersofthejuryforacceptingbeingpartofthisprocess. I am beholden to manygenerous friends I havemet in Palma: Natália, Leo, Joana, Johnna, Charles,Isis,Ernesto,CrisandAna. IwouldliketothankmyparentsFernandaandTadeu,my sister Isadora, my grandparents Magda, Tauil, Socorro and Matias, all my family and friends for their never ending care and comprehension. I also thank to my great grandmother Helena for her love. Finally, I reserve my especial thank to Sérgio for unconditionalloveand support. Iam gladto sharemylifewithsomeonesoamazing andadmirable. Forfinancial supportIthankto CNPq, CAPES and FINEP. If thebrainwere simpleenoughforusto understandit,we wouldbetoo simpletounderstandit" —KENHILL