Transcript MBC Overview and Charge to Board

MBC Overview and
Charge to Board
Jay McClelland
Director
Welcome, Thanks, and
Introductions
• Our Board Members:
– Tom Jessel, Read Montague, Pietro Perona,
Terry Sejnowski
• Our Steering Committee
– Jay McClelland, Bill Newsome, Andrew Ng,
Krishna Shenoy
• Our Current Trainees
– Logan Grosenick, David Kastner, Jacob
Rinaldi, Nick Steinmetz
Basic Tenets
• Cognitive states are emergent consequences of
the interactions of neurons distributed widely
within and across brain regions
• To understand how ensembles of neurons
represent and use information and how they
work together to give rise to human mental
abilities requires the synergistic engagement of
theoretical and computational research with
experimental investigations
Daunting Facts
• A human brain contains
~1011 neurons
~1015 connections
Receptive fields learned from natural images using
sparse coding by Olshausen and Field (1996)
Neural Prosthetics:
Translating brain
activity into actions
Introduction to MBC
• Origins of MBC
– Jay McClelland’s arrival
– Seeds of mutual interest and connection
– NSF IGERT training grant proposal
• Three goals
– Interdisciplinary engagement
– Graduate training
– Faculty development
Interdisciplinary
Research
Engagement
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•
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Speaker series
Dinner Seminars
MBC Symposium
High temporal resolution
human brain imaging
• Shared computing
resources
• Multi-investigator grant on
dynamics of decision
making
– McClelland, Newome,
Holmes, and others
Graduate Training
Key Program Features
• Open to PhD students in
degree-granting programs at
Stanford
• Funded by IGERT Grant, only
applicable to US nationals
• Individualized program of
coursework and research
training
• Requires bridging and
stretching to integrate
complementary approaches
• Requires well-developed plan
• Each trainee has both a
mentor and a co-mentor
New Course Offerings
• Computational Neuroscience I&II
– Huguenard
– (Sanger)
• PDP class
– McClelland
• Stochastic and Nonlinear
Dynamcs
– Fisher
• Computational Models of
Neocortex
– Dean
• (Multivariate Data Analysis)
• (Case Studies Class)
Enhancement and Adjustment?
• Fill Course Gaps
– But existing faculty have full loads
• Find funding for non-US nationals
• Adjust program requirements and
application process to increase early
engagement
Building MBC Faculty
• MBC has participated in recruitment of outstanding
Junior Faculty in CS and Psychology
– Fei-Fei Li
– Sam McClure
• We have many other relevant faculty but no one at the
core of Theoretical Neuroscience
• Continued faculty development is likely around the
edges of Theoretical Neuroscience
• A Billet we could offer to possible partner departments
might be helpful to attract someone at the heart of this
field, who whose teaching would be expected to meet
the needs of the MBC program