Neural codes in early sensory areas maximize fitness
Schedule
Thursday, May 13, 2021
01:00 UTC
Todd Hare
Prof
University of Zürich
Host: Caltech SocDecNeuro
Recording
Open recording
Event Information
Recording
Available
Host
Caltech SocDecNeuro
Duration
70 minutes
Abstract
It has generally been presumed that sensory information encoded by a nervous system should be as accurate as its biological limitations allow. However, perhaps counter intuitively, accurate representations of sensory signals do not necessarily maximize the organism’s chances of survival. We show that neural codes that maximize reward expectation—and not accurate sensory representations—account for retinal responses in insects, and retinotopically-specific adaptive codes in humans. Thus, our results provide evidence that fitness-maximizing rules imposed by the environment are applied at the earliest stages of sensory processing.
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