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Seminar✓ Recording AvailableNeuroscience

The butterfly strikes back: neurons doing 'network' computation

Upinder Singh Bhalla

Prof

National Centre for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

Schedule
Friday, May 29, 2020

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Schedule

Friday, May 29, 2020

1:00 PM Europe/London

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Host: The Neurotheory Forum

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Recording provided by the organiser.

Event Information

Domain

Neuroscience

Original Event

View source

Host

The Neurotheory Forum

Duration

70 minutes

Abstract

We live in the age of the network: Internet social neural ecosystems. This has become one of the main metaphors for how we think about complex systems. This view also dominates the account of brain function. The role of neuronsdescribed by Cajal as the "butterflies of the soul" has become diminished to leaky integrate-and-fire point objects in many models of neural network computation. It is perhaps not surprising that networkexplanations of neural phenomena use neurons as elementary particles andascribe all their wonderful capabilities to their interactions in a network. In the network view the Connectome defines the brain and the butterflies have no role. In this talk I'd like to reclaim some key computations from the networkand return them to their rightful place at the cellular and subcellular level. I'll start with a provocative look at potential computational capacity ofdifferent kinds of brain computation: network vs. subcellular. I'll then consider different levels of pattern and sequence computationwith a glimpse of the efficiency of the subcellular solutions. Finally I propose that there is a suggestive mapping between entire nodesof deep networks to individual neurons. This in my view is how we can walk around with 1.3 litres and 20 watts of installed computational capacity still doing far more than giant AI server farms.

Topics

brain functioncomputational capacityconnectomeelectrophysiologyintegrate-and-fire modelnetwork computationneuronspattern computationsequence computationsubcellular computationtheory

About the Speaker

Upinder Singh Bhalla

Prof

National Centre for Biological Sciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

Contact & Resources

Personal Website

www.ncbs.res.in/faculty/bhalla

@bhalla_lab

Follow on Twitter/X

twitter.com/bhalla_lab

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