The Institute of Neural Computation invites you to:

2011 Rockwood Memorial Lecture: Dr. Rodney Douglas, "Constructive Cortical Computation"

April 4th, 2011
4:30p-6:00p
SDSC Auditorium, San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC San Diego

GUEST SPEAKER:
Dr. Rodney Douglas, Director and Professor, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and University of Zurich

ABSTRACT:
There is today a wide spread belief that the brain can be reverse-engineered by an exhaustive reductionistic program such as connectomics: Once the neurons and their connections are fully described, knowledge of function will follow directly. Over the past two decades the Institute of Neuroinformatics has contributed to that philosophy by characterizing the connectivity of visual neocortex; by proposing how there current circuits of the superficial layers could implement rich computational primitives; and by engineering neuromorphic electronic systems that emulate those circuits. But these research programs stumble on the crucial questions of how the cortical circuits are intelligently constructed and configured. So, in recent years we have begun exploring a synthetic approach to these questions by simulating the methods of self-construction used by Biology to evoke the cortical circuits from only a few precursor cells. The notion is that the organization and function of neuronal circuits may be better and more efficiently understood in terms of the dynamics of their unfolding developmental process than by measuring their adult connection matrix or 'connectome'. This talk will describe steps in that direction of research.

SPEAKER BIO:
Rodney Douglas is the Director of the Institute of Neuroinformatics, and Professor of Neuroinformatics, at Neuroscience Center Zurich (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland. Dr. Douglas is also a Visiting Professor, Computation and Neural Systems, at Caltech. His current research interests include; experimental anatomy and physiology of visual cerebral cortex; theoretical analysis and simulation of cortical circuits; design and fabrication of neuromorphic systems; use of analog Very Large Scale Integration methods to construct electronic circuits that perform analogous signal processing and computational functions to biological neuronal networks; the development of neuromorphic robots that use analog VLSI chips for sensory, motor, and higher order processing; self-constructing simple behaving organisms; and self-constructing neural networks.

HOSTED BY: Gert Cauwenberghs

The Rockwood Memorial Lectures are endowed by Mr. And Mrs. Jerome Rockwood in memory of their late son, Paul, who received a B.S. in Computer Science from UCSD in 1980 and then obtained a second degree B.A. in Psychology in 1981. In 1983 he started a company, Integral Solutions, to develop a universal language translation, but died tragically in a mountaineering accident before he could fulfill his promise.

MORE INFORMATION:
This event is open to the public, free of charge. For additional information visit http://inc.ucsd.edu/rockwood.html or contact Khushbu Gokalgandhi at 858-534-0934 or email kgokalga@ucsd.edu.