[Aspuru-Guzik group list] [iic-seminars] [Colloquium] Monday, April 30, 2007, Computational Neuroscience Lecture: Peter Dayan

Peter Dayan Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College, London. Monday April 30, 4pm Maxwell Dworkin G125 Norepinephrine and Neural Interrupts The neuromodulator norepinephrine plays an important role in aspects of vigilance and attention. Extensive neurophysiological recordings show that noradrenergic neurons are activated on a phasic, sub-second time-scale by behaviorally relevant stimuli and contingencies within tasks. We model this activity as a neural interrupt signal that reports on unexpected changes of state within a task, and show that this offers a faithful characterization of a range of the neurophysiological data. We also discuss its relationship to existing theories suggesting norepinephrine reporting on uncertainty between tasks on a much longer time-scale of minutes and beyond. These theoretical characterizations are complementary and jointly offer a rich picture of a key neural signal. Host: Leslie Valiant _______________________________________________ Colloquium mailing list Colloquium(a)deas.harvard.edu https://lists.deas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/colloquium _______________________________________________ iic-seminars mailing list iic-seminars(a)calists.harvard.edu http://calists.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/iic-seminars