CSAIL Event Calendar: Previous Series

A fundamental goal of sensory systems neuroscience is the characterization of the functional relationship between environmental stimuli and neural response. In seeking computational models that can be used for this purpose, there is a natural tradeoff between biological realism and computational simplicity/tractability. I'll describe a family of solutions we've been investigating that inherit much of the simplicity and computational advantage of linear systems, and yet are capable of faithfully reproducing many of the complexities of spiking neural responses. I'll discuss application of these methods to visual neurons in retina and cortex.