Connectionists: NIPS 2006: Decoding the Code. Workshop Announcement/Call for Abstracts

[Eric E. Thomson]

NIPS 2006 WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:
DECODING THE NEURAL CODE 

For the full announcement, see the workshop web site:
http://science.ethomson.net/NIPS_workshop.html

INVITED SPEAKERS
Henry Abarbanel (Physics, UCSD)
Andrea Hasenstaub (Neurobiology, Yale)
Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA)
Pamela Reinagel (Neurobiology, UCSD)
Michael Shadlen (Physiology, U Washington)
Tatyana Sharpee (Physiology, UCSF)
Simon Thorpe (CNRS)

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
William B. Kristan, Jr. (wkristan at ucsd.edu)
Terrence J. Sejnowski (terry at salk.edu)
Eric Thomson (thomson at neuro.duke.edu)

DESCRIPTION
There is great interest in sensory coding. Studies of sensory coding typically involve recording from sensory neurons during stimulus presentation, and the investigators determine which aspects of the neuronal response are most informative about the stimulus. These studies are left with a decoding problem: are the discovered codes, sometimes quite exotic, ultimately used by the nervous system to guide behavior? In our one-day workshop, researchers with many different backgrounds will evaluate what we know about neuronal decoders and suggest new strategies, both experimental and computational, for addressing the decoding problem.

Each hour, five to six researchers will address a particular question for five minutes, followed by a half-hour discussion. We will also set aside time for a poster session.

We tentatively plan to include the following questions, and are soliciting additional questions from our speakers:
1. Which variables that encode stimuli are actually used to guide behavior?
2. What mechanisms do nervous systems use to decode encoded information?
3. Are motor systems better than sensory systems for experimentally addressing decoding?
4. What computational and experimental techniques are needed to address decoding? For instance, should information theory be used to address decoding as well as encoding?




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Eric Thomson 
Email: thomson at neuro.duke.edu
Lab: http://www.nicolelislab.net
Personal: http://ericthomson.net