Questions tagged [theoretical-neuroscience]
For questions about mathematical and computational neuroscience.
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What are current neuronal explanations and models of 'consciousness'?
I would like to understand more about consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. I have a limited understanding of it in the philosophical/psychological sense through lectures.
Although it is ...
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Why would the brain flip the images perceived by your eyes?
The following is a common scientific statement, which you don't have to google long for to find:
The eye views images upside-down in the manner of a camera lens, but
our brains reinterpret this ...
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Is back-prop biologically plausible?
One of the common criticisms of Deep Learning is it's training algorithms, back-propagation of error (back-prop), has no biologically plausible implementation, despite evidence of something like it ...
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References for biologically plausible models of knowledge representation?
I'm looking for references that deal with the issue of how various kinds of semantic knowledge are (or might be) represented neurally. Most of the discussion of this topic seems skewed by social ...
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What is the capacity of the human brain?
What would a reasonable estimate be of the data capacity of the human brain expressed in bytes?
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Neural networks with biologically plausible accounts of neurogenesis
One of the reasons artificial neural net algorithms like cascade correlation (pdf) have been generating interest is because they start with a minimal topology (just input and output unit) and recruit ...
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Applications of computational learning theory in the cognitive sciences
Computational learning theory (CoLT) is a branch of theoretical computer science associated with the mathematical analysis of machine learning. A lot of the early ideas of the field take inspiration ...
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How does neural spiking begin in the fetus?
I'm interested in modeling human brain spiking activity. How does the very first spiking activity begin in the fetus?
I imagine all spiking activity is initiated by the senses and internal ...
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What is an effective metric of complexity for an Artificial Neural Network?
After asking the question What is the most complex neural network... I realized I don't really have a good metric of "complexity" in a general sense. The simplest measure would likely be count of ...
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Difference between parallel processing done by human brain and by computers
I am asking a question regarding parallel processing as done by billions of Neurons inside our brain and parallel processing done by our computers in a cluster for example or even on a Graphics ...
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Computational models of early learning in children
What are currently used biologically plausible computational models/frameworks of early learning in children?
Personally, I have used cascade correlation neural nets to model pronoun acquisition in ...
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Criteria for evaluating cognitive systems
In the first chapter of the book "How to Build a Brain", Chris Eliasmith quickly establishes some criteria which he will use to evaluate Spaun, the cognitive system described in the book. He describes ...
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In what ways do our brains use compression?
I am reading a book on information theory and one line in the book states that "Brains are the ultimate compression and communication systems." However, there is no further elaboration on the matter. ...
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How are movements stored in the brain?
The high level flow of information through the brain for the purpose of motor control is well established. It is also known the cerebellum stores many different movements, while also participating in ...
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Difference between content-addressable memory and associative memory?
Often when I'm reading theoretical neuroscience publications, such as "Towards an integration of deep learning and neuroscience", as well as "Memory and the Computational Brain", theorists often ...
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Is EEG brain-computer interface reliable?
I am a computer science student [assume I have very little knowledge of the biological part of EEG]. I recently came across the topic EEG and was pretty interested in it. As far as I know, we get an ...
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Biological plausibility of bayesian models of cognition
Inspired by this question: What are some of the drawbacks to probabilistic models of cognition?
I would like to know more about the biological plausibility of Bayesian models of cognition. Is there ...
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How distantly related are research in computational neuroscience and neural networks/machine learning?
If one is more interested in understanding how algorithms in the biological brain solve problems (theoretically, particularly the mathematical aspect), and possibly in building brain-inspired ...
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In what ways can neurons fire randomly?
When developing a model of a biologically-plausible neural network, it is important to know all the circumstances under which neurons can fire. But, I am limiting this question to random firing. In ...
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What are the mathematical models of memory?
Are there mathematical models of memory in humans or animals?
I want to know how neuroscientists use mathematics to describe memory in living creatures. How do neuroscientists model memory and show ...
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What research has been done on brain-to-brain interfaces?
Is there an existing research area focusing on brain to brain interfaces? If so, what are some papers that have been published in this area?
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Does an action potential abolish an excitatory postsynaptic potential?
From some sources, I've read that excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) decay over time, which would imply that they aren't abolished by action potentials. However, other sources seem to indicate ...
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Why does a neuron choose to connect to another?
I have been reading about neuron creation, guidance cues and all sorts of highly complex mechanisms used to allow one neuron axon to extend or connect - but to what end?
Why does one neuron end up ...
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Interpretation & Actual Result of "10% of your brain" Myth [duplicate]
It is well known that the common myth that an individual only ever uses 10% of their brain is.. well, a myth. I had a question about a possible interpretation of this idea, and a follow-up question ...
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Does neurodynamics have any relation to psychodynamics?
From Neural oscillation - Wikipedia:
Neural oscillations are commonly studied from a mathematical framework and belong to the field of "neurodynamics", an area of research in the cognitive sciences ...
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Are there neural loops within a column or an area of the cortex?
Neuronal networks can make loops because a neuron has a direction (from dendrite to axon).
What's the smallest area in the cortex where we can find a loop and what are these loops?
I understand ...
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Why is PES biologically plausible?
The NEF puts great emphasis on biological plausibility. However, I'm not clear on why the Prescribed Error Sensitivity (PES) learning rule, used in many NEF-based models, is considered to be ...
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ML/Neuroscience: TensorFlow vs PyTorch vs Keras for bulding NN models of the nervous system?
I would be very grateful to people with experience in using neural network models in neuroscience for advice!
What approach would you recommend for building neural networks?
I am choosing between ...
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How are newly created neurons recruited into existing networks?
As far as I understand, the basics of neurogenesis (abstracted down to the level that makes sense to a computer scientist) is as follows:
Neural progenitor cells differentiate into new neurons that ...
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What are the key examples of the use of computational methods in the study of biological neural networks?
In an upcoming postdoc, I'm going to be looking through biological neural network data in the hopes of finding some interesting "patterns". I'm coming at this field from a mathematics/computer ...
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Can we draw conclusions about content of thoughts from neural firing patterns?
Can the neural firing patterns of animals be associated with specific kinds of thoughts? (ie Thoughts related to food, mating, or neighborly aggression?)
I am curious about the speculations in ...
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What is the role of traveling waves in circuit formation during cortical development?
Propagating waves of activity have been characterized in various regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (Nauhaus et al., 2012). Recently they have been reported for the first time to occur ...
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By which neuronal mechanisms does music make us happy or sad?
There are brain regions (X) that show stronger activation for joyful music, regions (Y) that show stronger activation for sad music, and regions (Z) that show similar activation for both.
Assuming ...
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Importance of Neural Synchrony to Cognition
Is there a consensus on whether computation using Neural Synchrony is reasonable or not? In "How to Build a Brain", Chris Eliasmisth cites Yuko Munakata and R. C. O'Reilly as saying that "the ...
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Can humans be reduced to a function?
Based on an article by UK Essays, we are nothing more than robots that operate based on our past experience and other factors like amount of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other chemicals, trying to ...
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What are some good references for preprocessing and analysis of the P300 response from EEG data in Python?
I have just started to work on problems in neuroscience on my own. I sought to analyze the P300 response from EEG data because I was trying to understand a Kaggle.com challenge that used it. I found ...
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Why do scientists say brains are faster than computers?
Supposing that neurons function similarly to transistors: A neuron able to fire $200$ times per second and transistors can be switched on and off more than $100,000,000,000$ ($10^{11}$) times per ...
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What functional purpose does a cortical column serve?
The Blue Brain project led by Henry Markram focused on simulating cortical columns under the idea they form basic processing units of the brain/cognitive function.
What functional purpose does a ...
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Computational model of biological object recognition
The human brain can achieve a remarkable ability to recognize visual patterns in an Invariant, selective and fast manner. The human visual system is quite powerful. It has an exquisite selectivity ...
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What aspects of ACT-R are not contained within Spaun?
ACT-R was the first big cognitive model and excels at modelling human behavioral data quite accurately.
Spaun, which is the world's largest functional brain model, took a lot of ACT-R's insights and ...
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Is there a function between loss of memory and time?
I have 2 related questions with regards to memory capabilities and time:
"Is there a function (e.g. $e^{-\Delta Time}$) with regards to memory loss?" Everyone is bound to forget over time. Is there a ...
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How does a human classify or cluster data?
Here, what I mean by DATA are text documents.
I am going to do a research on text clustering algorithms by the help of artificial neural networks (ANNs). But first of all I need to know how our brain ...
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What is the consequences to be a person who works in theory of science?
this question rises into my head this day. First I read the comment by @mikeazo he says
Do you learn best by reading or doing? That will make a difference.
Also, today I had a class in ...
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Is "Biophysics of Computation" still a good book?
Currently I'm studying mathematics (2nd year) and I think I'm pretty into neuroscience. To "test" this, I purchased Principles of Computational Modelling in Neuroscience and am considering to get ...
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A question on synapses
we are looking into running simulations of the nervous system of C. Elegans. It is believed by most people that the worm's nervous system encodes information through graded potentials and/or plateau ...
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Is neurogenesis driven by prediction error?
Various Deep Learning algorithms [1] and neural models [2] make use of neurogenesis to reduce prediction errors. How much evidence is there that neurogenesis is driven by prediction error or novel ...
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Simulating Hudgkin Huxley neural network
I'm starting work on a computational neuroscience project where I want to create my own model of a spiking Hodgkin-Huxley neuron and connect many instances (about 400) of this model through synapses. ...
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How do the motor system and Central Pattern Generators interact?
Central Pattern Generators are populations of neurons found in the spinal chord that assist in the creation of rhythmic movements. See "Human spinal locomotor control is based on flexibly organized ...
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What's the difference between a Hamming and Hopfield network?
I have recently discovered that both Hamming and Hopfield networks are both content addressable memories. However, what is the difference between these two networks designs and their performance?
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Is there a research field which holds close connections between computational neuroscience and classical robotics
Is there a research field which holds close connections between computational neuroscience and classical robotics, particularly building corresponding robots to implement and test the theories from ...
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