Computational framework

Perceiving causality, anticipating events, choosing an action or understanding language - all facets of complex behavior are anchored in time and rely on representing, recognizing and expressing temporally patterned sequences. Established approaches in the cognitive sciences formulate these processes in terms that involve the manipulation of sequentially organized time-discrete (symbolic) representations. While we understand fairly well how artificial systems perform on different aspects of the problem, existing models of biological (specifically spiking) networks that use biophysically realis

Predictive processing is a computational framework that aims to explain how the brain processes sensory information by making predictions about the environment and minimizing prediction errors. It can also be used to explain some of the key symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. In my talk, I will provide an overview of our progress in this endeavor.

…Here, we developed and tested a computational framework to investigate how aesthetic values are formed. We show that it is possible to explain human preferences for a visual art piece based on a mixture of low- and high-level features of the image. Subjective value ratings could be predicted not only within but also across individuals, using a regression model with a common set of interpretable features. We also show that the features predicting aesthetic p

Filaments (slender, microscopic elastic bodies) are prevalent in biological and industrial settings. In the biological case, the filaments are often active, in that they are driven internally by motor proteins, with the prime examples being cilia and flagella. For cilia in particular, which can appear in dense arrays, their resulting motions are coupled through the surrounding fluid, as well as through surfaces to which they are attached. In this talk, I present numerical simulations exploring the coordinated motion of active filaments and how it depends on the driving force, density of fil

The cortical algorithm hypothesis states that there is one common computational framework to solve diverse cognitive problems such as vision, voice recognition and motion control. In my talk, I propose a strategy to guide the search for this algorithm and I present a few ideas on how some of its components might look like. I'll explain why a highly interdisciplinary approach is needed from neuroscience, computer science, mathematics and physics to make further progress in this important question.

…I will present a computational framework that implements functional and structural plasticity from sp