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Philip Holmes

 

Monday 15th September 2014

Time: 4pm

 

Basement Seminar Room

Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR

 

A multi-area stochastic accumulator model for a visual search and decision task

Using behavioral and electrophysiological data from two monkeys performing a covert visual search and decision task, we develop a leaky accumulator model for the dynamics of neural populations. The model represents inferior temporal cortex (ITC), anterior intraparietal area (AIP), motor cortex and six receptive fields in the lateral interparietal area (LIP). Parameter values fitted to the data
allow us to propose mechanisms that account for differences between the animals in terms of connection strengths among ITC, AIP and LIP, suggesting that they use different strategies to accomplish the task. More generally, our approach may be of interest in modeling cognitive tasks that involve multiple brain areas.

If time permits, I will describe how leaky accumulators can be derived from biophysically based spiking neuron models.

The talk will draw on joint work with Sam Feng, Mike Schwemmer and Jonathan Cohen, using data kindly provided by Jackie Gottlieb (Columbia University).

Philip Holmes,
Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics,
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
and Princeton Neuroscience Institute,
Princeton University