Thesis summary

In the brain, complex actions require vast amounts of information to be passed along
a multitude of short- and long-range connections. For instance, the act of reading
provokes an orchestrated response of neurons from distinct cortical areas related to visual
processing, memory, imagination, attention, and more. Much of our understanding of
this interplay has stemmed from relating the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD)
signal from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings to cognitive
tasks, which provides a coarse-grained view of brain activity. Recent advances in
technology have enabled simultaneous recordings of multiple neurons from distinct
brain regions, offering new opportunities for studying fine-scale communication in the
brain. Despite this, analysing such large-scale recordings poses significant theoretical
and computational challenges. Our research tackles the challenge of using this data to
improve our understanding of interactions between brain regions and their behavioural
correlates.