Connectionists: Call for abstract: NIPS 2009 workshop on normative electrophysiology

[Jean-Pascal Pfister]

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CALL FOR ABSTRACT
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*NIPS 2009 WORKSHOP ON NORMATIVE ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY*

We are now soliciting abstracts (see format below) for the NIPS 2009
Workshop on :
Normative Electrophysiology: explaining cellular properties of neurons from
first principles.
Authors of accepted abstracts will be entitled to present a poster during
the workshop.

*Webpage*
http://blg.eng.cam.ac.uk/t/bin/view/Public/Lengyel/EventNips09

*Key dates*

- abstract submission deadline: October 15th, 2009
- Notification of acceptance: October 30th, 2009
- Workshop: December 11th, 2009


*Workshop description*

In the past decades, computational neuroscience has seen a burgeoning of
normative approaches. These studies made significant advances in formulating
formal theories of optimality, and optimal computations, identifying
relevant physical and computational constraints under which those
computations need to be implemented, developing analytical methods and
numerical algorithms to solve the resulting constrained optimization
problems, and relating these solutions to biological substrates. However,
only a relatively small fraction of these studies attempted to make specific
predictions about, and thus interpret in normative terms, the cellular-level
electrophysiological properties of individual neurons or synapses. Small in
numbers it may be, the potential impact of this particular line of research
cannot be ignored as such theories may provide a way to bridge the gap
between the cellular-molecular and the systems-level branches of
neuroscience by connecting low-level properties of the nervous system to its
high-level functions. Our workshop aims to highlight and discuss recent work
in this field.

Since much of the theoretical background in this field has been adopted from
information theory, machine learning, and related fields, we expect that not
only experimental and computational neuroscientists, but also machine
learning researchers will be interested in the general topic and the
specific talks.

*Speakers*

- Sophie Denève, École Normale Supérieure
- Adrienne Fairhall, U Washington
- Máté Lengyel, U Cambridge
- Jean-Pascal Pfister, U Cambridge
- Tatyana Sharpee, Salk Institute
- Taro Toyoizumi, Columbia U

*Workshop location*

Westin Resort and Spa / Hilton Whistler Resort and Spa
Whistler, B.C., Canada

*Submission instructions*

Please submit abstracts (maximum 300 words) in plain text format by email
directly to jean-pascal.pfister at eng.cam.ac.uk with the mention "Normative
Electrophysiology".

*Organizers*

Jean-Pascal Pfister (primary contact)
Computational and Biological Learning Lab

Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge

Trumpington Street,
Cambridge CB2 1PZ
United Kingdom

tel: +44 (0)1223 748 506
fax: +44 (0)1223 332 662
e-mail: jean-pascal.pfister at eng.cam.ac.uk

Máté Lengyel

Computational and Biological Learning Lab
Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge
Trumpington Street,
Cambridge CB2 1PZ
United Kingdom

tel: +44 (0)1223 748 532
fax: +44 (0)1223 332 662
e-mail: m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk



-- 
Jean-Pascal Pfister, PhD
Computational and Biological Learning Lab
Cambridge University Engineering Department
Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK
tel: +44 (0)1223 748 506, fax:  +44 (0)1223 332 662
email: jean-pascal.pfister at eng.cam.ac.uk
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~jptp2/
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