The Theory of Darwinian Neurodynamics
NICE Seminar
- When?
- Thursday 18 October 2012, 15:30 to 16:30
- Where?
- 39BB02
- Open to:
- Public, Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Dr Chrisantha Fernando, School of Electronic Engineering & Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London
There are informational replicators in the brain. Response characteristics, e.g. orientation selectivity in visual cortex, are known to be copied from neuron to neuron. Through STDP small neuronal circuits can undertake causal inference on other circuits to reconstruct the topology of those circuits based on their spontaneous activity. Patterns of synaptic connectivity are replicating units of evolution in the brain. The space of predictions is unlimited; brains do sparse search in this model space. We've shown that Darwinian dynamics is efficient for sparse search compared to algorithms that lack information transfer between adaptive units. Darwinian dynamics in the brain implements approximate Bayesian inference.
These ideas are developed in the following journals
1. http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00024/abstract
2. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ctf20/dphil_2005/Publications/Fernando2010NeurComp.pdf
3. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0023534
4. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003775
and presented in an invited plenary talk at NIPS 2011 in Granada
http://videolectures.net/nips2011_szathmary_fernando_brain/
I seek post-docs to peruse their own research program in the Theory of Darwinian Neurodynamics within the framework of two grants: Templeton FQEB "Bayes, Darwin, and Hebb", and FP-7 "INSIGHT II" (FET OPEN STREP) "Darwinian Neurodynamics" developing efficient parallel algorithms for robotic play, and formulating the deep mathematical relations between Darwinian dynamics and Bayesian inference. In conclusion, while the watchmaker is blind, he is not stupid.