Mod­els of Spik­ing Neu­rons

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• NeuroArts

• Mod­els of Spik­ing Neu­rons

• Magnus Richardson

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: NeuroArts

  Start­ing with the work of Gal­vani in the 18th cen­tury and end­ing with mod­ern, su­per-com­puter ap­proaches, this talk aims to give an overview of the ba­sics of how neu­rons un­der­lie the nat­ural com­pu­ta­tion that takes place in the ner­vous sys­tem. I will cover some of the tech­niques that have been used for mea­sur­ing ac­tiv­ity in the ner­vous sys­tem at dif­fer­ent spa­tial and tem­po­ral scales, how it came to be thought that neu­rons are the basic com­pu­ta­tional unit of the brain, how in­for­ma­tion flows through neu­rons and how neu­rons wire to­gether to form synapses – the chang­ing strengths of which are thought to rep­re­sent the stor­age of mem­o­ries. The talk will end with a dis­cus­sion of some re­cent spec­u­la­tive the­o­ries of how the neo­cor­tex  – the brain re­gion where our high level thought processes take place – might work.

Category:

• Panel