Planned Segment

Neural Gain Control and Divisive Normalization

Guest: Dr. Michael Carandini

Is divisive normalization a canonical neural computation appearing across brain regions and sensory modalities?

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Dopamine and Reward Prediction Errors

Guest: Dr. Wolfram Schultz

Do dopamine neurons encode reward prediction errors as temporal difference learning theory suggests, or is this interpretation incomplete?

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Hippocampal Place Cells and Spatial Navigation

Guest: Dr. Edvard Moser

How do place cells and grid cells collectively implement cognitive maps for spatial navigation and memory?

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Critical Dynamics and Self-Organized Criticality in Neural Networks

Guest: Dr. John Beggs

Do neural networks operate at critical points between order and disorder to optimize information processing?

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Cerebellum and Motor Learning

Guest: Dr. Reza Shadmehr

How does the cerebellum implement internal models for predictive motor control and adaptation to environmental changes?

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Sparse Coding and Efficient Neural Representations

Guest: Dr. Bruno Olshausen

Does the brain optimize for sparse, efficient representations of sensory inputs, and what computational advantages does sparsity provide?