Cosyne 2005 Workshops
March 21-22, 2005
Snowbird, Utah
Workshop Title
New Approaches to Characterizing Neural Responses
Organizer(s)
Jonathan Pillow, Nicole Rust and Eero Simoncelli
Abstract
Quantitative characterizations of neural responses provide a precise framework for studying the computations performed throughout the nervous system. Recently, a number of sophisticated techniques have been introduced to characterize neural responses. Typically, the goal of these approaches is to develop functional models that describe a neuron mathematically in terms of the transformation it performs on its input. These techniques have also been used to identify receptive field properties and the "stimulus features" to which a neuron responds.
The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are involved in the development and implementation of these techniques to discuss recent innovations in the field, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of these approaches. Topics that will be addressed include:
1: New techniques for recovering receptive fields (e.g. spike-triggered covariance, information maximization, spike manifold characterization, other extensions to Weiner kernel analysis).
2: New classes of stimuli. (e.g. naturalistic, subspace and orthogonal stimulus sets).
3: New model frameworks. (e.g. generalized linear models, multi-dimensional models, models incorporating spike generation, other extensions to the Linear-Nonlinear-Poisson (LNP) model).
4: Validation and interpretation of characterization procedures. Linking functional characterizations to neural coding and biophysics.
