CFP: NIPS Post-Conference Workshop on Lateral Connections in the Cortex

[Joseph Sirosh]

	CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: NIPS POST-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
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 	COMPUTATIONAL ROLE OF LATERAL CONNECTIONS IN THE CORTEX
						

Substantial recent evidence indicates that intracortical connections
develop in an activity-dependent manner much like the afferent
connections to the cortex. For example, the pattern of long-range
lateral connections is closely coupled to the pattern of feature
detectors in the visual cortex, and can be altered by strabismus and
visual deprivation. Several possible functions have been suggested for
the lateral connections. They may (1) modulate receptive field
properties in a context-dependent manner and mediate perceptual filling
in, (2) mediate adult cortical plasticity such as dynamic receptive
fields, (3) store associatory information such as Gestalt rules, (4) act
as the substrate for stimulus-dependent synchronization and feature
binding, and (5) form the locus of perceptual learning in the primary
visual cortex.

The workshop will focus on collating the open questions and hypotheses
about the functional role of intracortical connectivity, and formulating
an agenda for computational and analytical modeling.  How do patterned lateral
connections form and develop? What do the patterns of lateral
connectivity tell us about information stored in the cortex?  How could
associatory information in the lateral connections be expressed during
cortical processing? How could lateral connections mediate learning
processes in the cortex? What is their role in cortical plasticity? What
types of neural network models are best suited for addressing such
questions?

Organizers:						Email:
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	Joseph Sirosh and Risto Miikkulainen            sirosh at cs.utexas.edu
	Dept of Computer Sciences			risto at cs.utexas.edu
	University of Texas at Austin
	Austin, TX--78712.

The workshop will be one day in length. Tentative speakers at the workshop 
include Terrence Sejnowski, Jack Cowan and Gary Blasdel.

If you would like to contribute a talk, please get in touch with one of
the organizers.

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