Nikolaos Chrysanthidis

 

I completed my doctoral degree at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in June 2025, with specialization in neuroscience and computational memory modelling, supervised by Professor Pawel Herman and Professor Anders Lansner. My doctoral research area focused on computational cognitive neuroscience where I employed modelling algorithms and brain-inspired cortical memory networks to study learning and memory functionality.

My current research focuses on hypotheses revolving around computational and cognitive neuroscience, employing spiking neural networks, and non-spiking network models. Over the past years, I have developed large-scale models of cortical networks with a focus on bridging the gap between brain function and the underlying mesoscopic-level biological processes.

My aim is to provide mechanistic explanations of memory phenomena concerning episodic, semantic, and working memory in continual learning paradigms. I have investigated the semantization of episodic memories, often described as the decontextualization of  associative memories - decoupling items from their associated contextual information.

Other projects focused on understanding and exploring the interplay between short-term dynamics (i.e., effects of recency) and long-term episodic memory processes on remembering item-in-contexts (episodic item-in-context memory).

Also, using non-spiking models, I explored the mechanisms that lead to episodic memory forgetting and omission (blank response) in an olfactory memory task. The models I used integrate various plasticity mechanisms at multiple time scales, coexisting and interacting to contribute to function and behavior.

We further studied the synergistic interaction of these learning rules in a suite of different working memory tasks and report the role and contribution of each plasticity mechanism in recall.