mbc overview and charge to board

MBC Overview andCharge to Board

Jay McClellandDirector

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• 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 TrainingKey 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