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SUMMARY:Computational Neuroscience Journal Club - Johannes Friedrich ( CBL
 \,  Cambridge University\, Engineering Dept.)
DTSTART:20140211T160000Z
DTEND:20140211T170000Z
UID:TALK50843@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Guillaume Hennequin
DESCRIPTION:Johannes Friedrich will cover:\nThe importance of mixed select
 ivity in complex cognitive tasks\nRigotti et al.\, Nature (2013)\nhttp://w
 ww.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7451/full/nature12160.html\n\nABSTRACT:
  Single-neuron activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is tuned to mixture
 s of multiple task-related aspects. Such mixed selectivity is highly heter
 ogeneous\, seemingly disordered and therefore difficult to interpret. We a
 nalysed the neural activity recorded in monkeys during an object sequence 
 memory task to identify a role of mixed selectivity in subserving the cogn
 itive functions ascribed to the PFC. We show that mixed selectivity neuron
 s encode distributed information about all task-relevant aspects. Each asp
 ect can be decoded from the population of neurons even when single-cell se
 lectivity to that aspect is eliminated. Moreover\, mixed selectivity offer
 s a significant computational advantage over specialized responses in term
 s of the repertoire of input–output functions implementable by readout n
 eurons. This advantage originates from the highly diverse nonlinear select
 ivity to mixtures of task-relevant variables\, a signature of high-dimensi
 onal neural representations. Crucially\, this dimensionality is predictive
  of animal behaviour as it collapses in error trials. Our findings recomme
 nd a shift of focus for future studies from neurons that have easily inter
 pretable response tuning to the widely observed\, but rarely analysed\, mi
 xed selectivity neurons.
LOCATION:Cambridge University Engineering Department\, CBL Rm #438 (http:/
 /learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Directions)
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