CNS*2001 Tenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting San Francisco and Pacific Grove, California, June 30 - July 5, 2001

Research into stochastic resonance in nervous system has found widespread evidence for a useful role of noise in the neuronal signalling over the past decade. Recently, some even more exciting ideas have been presented by Bethge and Pawelzik on the one, and Chance and Abbott on the other hand: Roughly speaking, they propose that the noise may actually be the signal, or function to control signal flow in a neuronal network. In addition, valuable progress has been made in probabilistic analysis of noisy neuronal networks by Nykamp and Cateau and Fukai.

In this workshop, we therefore would like to bring together researchers working on noisy signal processing. The people who developed the new ideas will be invited to give brief presentations/recapitulations of their talk, to spark off a hopefully lively discussion on the consequences of the novel "interpretations" of noise, as well as potential applications of new techniques.

Schedule:

1. Functional role of noise (ca 90 minutes)
   • 10-15 min presentations by Frances Chance and Matthias Bethge
   • one hour discussion
2. BREAK (15 minutes)
3. Methods (max. 90 minutes)
   • 10 min talks by Hide Cateau, Duane Nykamp, and Tony Burkitt
   • 30-45 min discussion

Organized by H. Plesser and A. N. Burkitt.