Connectionists: REMINDER: World wide VVTNS series (6th season): Wednesday, 12, 2025, at 11:00 am ET - Katharina Anna Wilmes, Institute of Neuroinformatics Zurich

[David Hansel]

[image: VVTNS.png]
https://www.wwtns.online
<https://streaklinks.com/A9c7PbbpKY7PxB6PaAJWGD3-/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wwtns.online>
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on twitter: wwtns at TheoreticalWide

You are cordially invited to  the lecture

Katharina Anna Wilmes

Institute of Neuroinformatics

Zurich

 on the topic of

Uncertainty-aware predictive processing

The lecture will be held on zoom on November 12, 2025, at *11:00 am ET *

To receive the link: https://www.wwtns.online/register-page

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*Abstract: *Minimising cortical prediction errors is thought to be a key
computation underlying perception, action, and learning. Yet, how the
cortex represents and uses uncertainty in this process remains unclear. In
the first part of this talk, I will present a normative framework showing
how uncertainty can modulate prediction error activity to yield
uncertainty-modulated prediction errors (UPEs), hypothesised to be
represented by layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons. We propose that these UPEs are
computed through inhibitory mechanisms involving SST and PV interneurons. A
circuit model demonstrates how cortical cell types can locally compute
means, variances, and UPEs, leading to adaptive learning rates. In the
second part, I will discuss how uncertainty modulation could be controlled
by higher-level representations. We formally derived neural dynamics that
minimise prediction errors under the assumption that cortical areas must
not only predict the activity in other areas and sensory streams but also
jointly project their inverse expected uncertainty about their predictions,
which we call “confidence”. This yields a confidence-weighted integration
of bottom-up and top-down signals, consistent with Bayesian principles, and
predicts the existence of second-order errors that compare confidence with
performance. We predict that these second-order errors propagate alongside
classical prediction errors through the cortical hierarchy, and simulations
demonstrate that this mechanism enables nonlinear classification within a
single cortical area.

*About VVTNS : Launched as the World Wide  Theoretical Neuroscience Seminar
(WWTNS) in November 2020 and renamed in homage to Carl van Vreeswijk in
Memoriam (April 20, 2022), Speakers have the occasion to talk about
theoretical aspects of their work which cannot be discussed in a setting
where the majority of the audience consists of experimentalists. The
seminars, **held on Wednesdays at 11 am ET,**  are 45-50 min long followed
by a discussion. The talks are recorded with authorization of the speaker
and are available to everybody on our YouTube channel.*


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