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
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