Topic: context-dependent computations

Cortical circuits are built from diverse collections of neurons. Recent large-scale surveys have characterized this striking variability in terms of molecular, morphological, and electrophysiological features, identifying hundreds to thousands of distinct neuronal cell types. However, in computational neuroscience, we often stick our heads in the sand and ignore these details, instead basing theory on homogeneous populations of simple ‘point neurons'. The problem with this approach is that it's currently unknown what is lost with such simplifying assumptions. The simplification may be entirely