Misha Tsodyks
Wednesday 27th November 2013
Time: 4pm
Basement Seminar Room
Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR
Information retrieval in neural network models of long-term memory.
The dominant theoretical framework for long-term memory is attractor
neural networks (ANN) in which information is encoded by neuronal
ensembles and stored by Hebbian synaptic modifications. I will
address the issue of memory recall in the absence memory-specific
retrieval cues, such as in free recall experiments. I will develop an
associative model of recall where each retrieved memory item is
triggering the recall of the next item. This model can be cast in the
language of random graph theory and universal laws of recall can be
derived that broadly account for the results of both classical and more
recent free recall experiments.
Misha Tsodyks is a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the
Weizmann Institute of Science and a visiting professor at the Center
for Neural Theory of Columbia University. He received his master and
PhD degrees in the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow
and then briefly held a research position in theoretical neuroscience
at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity of the Russian Academy of
Science. After moving to Israel in 1990, he did a postdoctoral
fellowship at the Hebrew University and then at the Salk Institute. He
became a faculty member at the Department o Neurobiology of the
Weizmann Institute in 1995. His research focuses on mathematical and
computational modelling of information processing in the brain.
+44 (0)20 7679 1176