CSCI 6905 -- Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience

 

Professor - Dr. Thomas Trappenberg  (tt@cs.dal.ca, 494-3087, Room 313)

Teaching Assistant: - Mr. Saeed Hashemi

Course Timeslot – Summer 2002, Monday & Wednesday 11:35am – 12:55pm
Room – Killam 4106

 

News:

 

May 7: Assignment 1 due May 15. pattern1 file

 

May 10: Course schedule

              Also, Patrick Lee found this nice link to more info on Alan Turing

 

May 13: There will be a MATLAB tutorial this afternoon at 4pm in the GINIus Boardroom (Rm 311)

 

May 15: a) Assignment 2, due May 22, is now online.

             b) James-Whitney Thiele found this link to the MATLAB reference

                 http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/ref.shtml

       c) Office Hours: Saeed (Tuesdays 2pm-3pm), Thomas (Thursdays 3pm-4pm)

 

May 24: Special topics list and updated schedule

 

May 27: a) Assignment 3 due June 3. pattern1 file

              b) There will be no office hour this Thursday for Thomas Trappenberg, Please see Saeed Hashemi instead.

              c) The marks for the assignment are now on the web

 

June 7: Topics for test 1. Note that you can bring your notes and the book for the test.

 

June 10: Meeting dates and brief guideline for special topics.

 

June 18: Assignment 4 due Monday, June 24

 

June 19: Revised schedule

 

June 24: Here’s the program som.m that implements a self-organizing net. Sorry, it’s a bit messy and I have not tuned the parameters. We will talk about this on Wednesday before talking about control systems (chapter 10.1 and 10.4).

 

July 2: Instruction for Term paper

 

July 22: Some additional Exercises. The solutions will be posted later this week, but I strongly recommend that you are trying it yourself before.

 

July 25: Here are the solutions of the exercise. Also, please check you marks for the assignment and let me know if there are any inconsistencies with your records

 

August 12: Final grades. Your term papers are in front of my office.

 

Outline:

 

Human cognitive abilities have long guided the development of computer systems. This course introduces the principles of information-processing in the brain, including the functionality of single neurons, networks of neurons, and large-scale neural architectures for specific cognitive functions. We discuss the information representation in the brain (distributed versus localist), information theoretical studies of spiking neurons, synaptic plasticity and adaptive architectures, and various forms of memory. We will then study some specific mental abilities and research topics such as vision, motor control, navigation, sleep, and consciousness. These issues will be contrasted with approaches that are discussed in the machine learning literature. The course includes a MATLAB tutorial, and the students are encouraged to explore some of the functionalities of basic neural networks.

 

Proposed syllables and modules:

 

- Introduction & lectures

 

 

- Tutorials & research topics:

  

(Examples: computer vision, behavioral modeling, data-classification, bottom-up and top-down processing, …)

 

 

Required textbook:

 

Thomas P. Trappenberg

Fundamental of computational neuroscience

Oxford University Press

ISBN 0-19-851583-9

 

Table of contents

Programs of the book

 

 

COURSE EVALUATION:

 

COURSE COMPONENT

WEIGHT

ASSIGNMENTS

30%

2 TESTS

30%

PROJECT (TERM PAPER)

30%

CLASS PARTICIPATION

10%

 

 

It is important for students to be aware of the Intellectual Honesty regulations at Dalhousie University. Please see http://www.cs.dal.ca/~grad/gradSite/grad.html#Plagiarism for more information. Any suspected cases of plagiarism will be forwarded to the Senate Discipline Committee.