This is the home page for the School of Informatics course "CNV: Computational Neuroscience of Vision", given by James A. Bednar in January-March 2014, for MSc and 4th-year undergraduate students.
This course uses the Topographica neural simulator and the Computational Maps in the Visual Cortex book; see the topographica.org and computationalmaps.org web sites for more details on the simulator and book.
You will get a chance to run simulations of visual cortex development and function, and gain an understanding of what modeling can achieve, what it cannot, and how modeling can be done well. See the course descriptor or the lecture notes for more details on the topics to be covered.
This course differs from NIP in being much more qualitative, with very little mathematical work required, and by providing extensive background material on vision. It differs from NC by focusing on large numbers of units organized into topographic maps, rather than on more detailed study of individual neurons or small populations. It differs from CCN by being focused only on results from the neuroscience of vision and on models grounded on specific visual areas and circuits within them.
20 Mar 2014: Please fill out the CNV course survey to help improve it for next year.
13 Mar 2014: Schedule updated; no class on 17 March.
3 Mar 2014: A new publication has just appeared (Levy et al. J. Neurosci 2014), which is very relevant to our current lecture topics.
27 Jan 2014: Updated assignment 1, with the IPython Notebook version now ready for part 1.
17 Jan 2014: For MSc students wanting to work on computational neuroscience, CNV is excellent training for these summer projects: P128, P130, P136.
30 Dec 2013: Coursework 2 deadlines updated.
27 Aug 2013: These pages will be updated regularly once the semester begins, so please check this page and the lecture notes page at least weekly for news. Be sure to refresh both pages in your browser before deciding there is no news.
Once the course completes, please fill out the online course survey to let us know how it went. There is also a mid-term evaluation questionnaire during class to allow students to give feedback during the course itself.
Last updated: 2014/03/23 23:32:47
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