News

Spiking Neural networks as Universal Function Approximators Workshop (SNUFA) - Nov. 5-6 - Info

>Timo Gierlich presented the Flash Talk Weight transport through spike timing for robust local gradients
> Maryeme Ouafoudi presented the Poster Evolving Interpretable Plasticity Rules on Accelerated Neuromorphic Hardware
> Julian Göltz and Jimmy Weber presented the Poster DelGrad: Exact gradients in spiking networks for learning transmission delays and weights

Forum für Universität und Gesellschaft - Nov. 02 - Info
The Forum provides free public access to expert knowledge to compile, clarify, and evaluate current information on selected topics. The 2024/25 series of event focuses on human insights in the era of artificial intelligence.

Watch Mihai A. Petrovici 's tal (DE) - Das Gehirn als Vorbild: künstliche neuronale Netzwerke. He explains how insights into the brain learning mechanisms can help develop more efficient and powerful AI systems.

Interview by the Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) Wissenschaftsmagazin - Info

Mihai A. Petrovici said a few words about the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics (9:57 - 10:18)

Bernstein Conference & Workshops 2024 - Sep. 29- Oct. 2 - Info

> Mihai A. Petrovici presented the talks "Error propagation through space, time and the brain" and "Computation and learning in physical neuronal systems"
> Kevin Max presented the talk "Biological deep learning with three-component rules"
> Katharina Wilmes presented the talk "Uncertainty-modulation of plasticity"
> Peter Lake presented the poster "DelGrad: Exact gradients in spiking networks for learning transmission delays and weights"
> Julian Göltz presented the poster "Emergence of Synfire Chains in Functional Multi-Layer Spiking Neural Networks"

New Article contribution in PNAS Nexus!

"Confidence and second-order errors in cortical circuits"
See Publication

AREADNE 2024 Research in Encoding And Decoding of Neural Ensembles - June 25-29 - Info

Federico Benitez presented "Order from chaos: Interplay of development and learning in recurrent networks of structured neurons" (Poster)

Manfred-Stärk-Symposium 2024 - Thunersee - June. 11-13

Special symposium on Theoretical Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Computation dedicated to our generous benefactor Manfred Stärk and his foundation.

New Article! Single neurons perform bayes-optimal cue integration.

"Conductance-based dendrites perform Bayes-optimal cue integration" - See Publication

New Article: (PAL), a bio-plausible method to learn efficient feedback weights!

"Learning efficient backprojections across cortical hierarchies in real time" - See Publication

ICNCE: International Conference on Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering - June 3-6 - Info

> Katharina Wilmes presented the Poster "Confidence estimation and second-order errors in cortical circuits" and the Talk "Neural mechanisms underlying predictive processing in uncertainty"
> Timo Gierlich presented the Poster "Weight transport through spike timing for robust local gradients"
> Peter Lake presented the Poster "DelGrad: Training transmission delays for spiking networks on neuromorphic hardware"
> Paul Haider gave the Talk "Backpropagation through space, time and the brain"

New Article Contribution!

"How Adversarial REM Dreams May Facilitate Creativity, and Why We Become Aware of Them" - See Publication

Neuromonster: Fifth International Convention on the Mathematics of Neuroscience
and AI - May 28 - 31 - Info
> Arno Granier gave the Talk "Confidence estimation and second-order errors in cortical circuits"
> Paul Haider gave the spotlight Talk "Backpropagation through space, time and the brain"
> Simon Brandt presented the Poster "Prospective and Retrospective Coding in Cortical and Hippocampal Pyramidal Neurons"

ZEN Neuroscience Lecture - May 24
Mihai A. Petrovici gave the lecture "Computing with physics: Intelligence in carbon and silicon" - Abstract

New Preprint Contribution!

"Prospective and retrospective coding in cortical neurons" - See Publication

EMBO Workshop Principles of dendritic function and computation - May 21-24 - Info

Ben von Hünerbein presented "Order from chaos: Interplay of development and learning in recurrent networks of structured neurons" (Flash Poster Talk)

LAKE CONFERENCES: The Neurobiology of Mental Health - May 12-16 - Info

Katharina Wilmes presented "Uncertainty-weighted prediction errors (UPEs) in cortical microcircuits" (Poster)

New Preprint! An efficient gradient-based algorithm for training temporal variables, specifically transmission delays in SNNs alongside synaptic weights.

"DelGrad: Exact gradients in spiking networks for learning transmission delays and weights" -
See Publication

Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop - April 28 - May 12 - Info
> Mihai A. Petrovici gave a lecture on "Why neurons spike: SNN applications"
> Julian Göltz co-presented "NeuroMorsick, interactive Morse decoding with DelGrad"
> Ismael Jaras led a detailed discussion group on "Fully local learning through space and time" and participated together with Maryeme Ouafoudi to the workgroup "Learning for Neuromorphic Hardware"
> Mihai and Ismael also encouraged the practice of adversarial training

As always, the science was great and it was a lot of fun!

New Preprint! Introducing Printed Circuit Board mimicking the basic dynamics of neurons

"Lu.i - A low-cost electronic neuron for education and outreach" - For more info, see the Lu.i page and the Publication

New Contribution to a multi-disciplinary review on the ethics of brain-inspired AI

"A method for the ethical analysis of brain-inspired AI" - See Publication

PLENA - Pucón Learning and AI Summit - Apr. 8-12 - Info

- Mihai A. Petrovici: "Local learning in physical neuronal networks" (Talk)
- Ismael Jaras: "Learning efficient backprojections in spike and rate-based neuronal microcircuits" (Poster)

New Preprint! Generalized Latent Equilibrium (GLE) computational framework for fully local spatio-temporal credit assignment in physical, dynamical networks of neurons.

"Backpropagation through space, time, and the brain" - See Publication

New Preprint!

"Increased perceptual reliability reduces membrane potential variability in cortical neurons" - See Publication

New Preprint!

"Order from chaos: Interplay of development and learning in recurrent networks of structured neurons" - See Publication

AIroV Symposium on AI, Robotics, and Vision - Mar. 26-27 - Info

- Mihai A. Petrovici: "Local learning in physical neuronal networks"
- Timo Gierlich: "Weight transport through spike timing for robust local gradients"

COSYNE Conference & Workshop - Feb. 29 - Mar 5 - Info

Five group members presented a Poster!
- Ben von Hünerbein: "Order from chaos: Interplay of development and learning in recurrent networks of structured neurons"
- Laura Kriener: "Learning efficient backprojections across cortical hierarchies in real time"
- Timo Gierlich: "Learning efficient backprojections across cortical hierarchies in real time"
- Julian Göltz: "Gradient-based methods for spiking physical systems"
and Katharina Wilmes co-organised the workshop "The predictive brain: from algorithms to mechanisms"

CAIM Ethics Talks - Feb. 29 - Info
The CAIM Embedded Ethics Lab hosted its second series of Ethics Talks entitled "Transparency and Ethics in AI Development" to foster public dialogue into ethical challenges of AI applications in medicine.

Mihai A. Petrovici was invited to discuss "AI, autonomy, and mental health." -> Recording

Swiss Computational Neuroscience Retreat - Jan 31 - Feb. 2
Ismael Jaras presented "Learning, forward and backward" and Arno Granier "Confidence estimation and second-order errors in cortical circuits".

EBRAINS 2.0 - New funded Project! - Start: 01.01.2024 / Runtime: 3 years
The EBRAINS 2.0 project was submitted in response to the INFRASERV call (a Horizon Europe's Research Infrastructures actions) and was awarded €38 million to further develop the EBRAINS research infrastructure services, a legacy of the Human Brain Project.

The project involves 59 partner institutions from 16 European countries and officially started in January 2024. As partners, our group together with CompNeuro were granted €1.1 million.

New Preprint! Path integration used by Bees for their navigation was implemented in the neuromorphic mixed-signal processor BrainScaleS-2

"Emulating insect brains for neuromorphic navigation" - See Publication

New Review in National Science Review!
The modular-integrative modelling approach shows promise in creating hybrid brain models that combine biological plausibility with functional performance.

"Modular-integrative modeling: a new framework for building brain models that blend biological realism and functional performance" - See Publication

10th Christmas Symposium & Party 2023 - Department of Physiology - Info

Ben von Hünerbein with "Jingles bells from Chaos" and
Arno Granier with "To believe or not to believe: uncertainty estimation in cortical circuits"
presented Christmas themed talks to keep up with the spirit of the symposium!

New lab member (December)

Welcome to our new PhD student Maryeme Ouafoudi!

Conclusion of the Human Brain Project (HBP)! - Nov. 21-24
Walter Senn (CompNeuro group) presented the work achieved together with the NeuroTMA group (M.A. Petrovici) during the last phase of the HBP. The SGA3 phase officially ended on 30 September. Together with our partners, we successfully completed the review of the HBP by the European Commission.
-> See Deliverable (D3.11) for an overview of our contributions to the HBP project.

SYNCH - New funded Project! - Start: 1.11.2023 / Runtime: 4 years
The collaborative SYNCH project - Combining SYnthetic Biology & Neuromorphic Computing for Chemosensory perception - has been awarded funding from the Volkswagen Foundation as part of the NEXT - Neuromorphic Computing call.
The project partners are our postdoc Kevin Max , together with Jan Steinkühler (CAU Kiel, DE) and Federico Corradi (TU Eindhoven, NL).

SYNCH will co-design synthetic biological pathways, neuromorphic electronic circuits, and bio-constrained theories of olfactory sensing to create an accurate and efficient perception system for olfaction.
The aim is to realize real-time decoding of biological interactions generated by a range of small molecules through temporal spiking data for fast, distributed, and online chemo-sensing.

International Conference on Neuromorphic, Natural and Physical Computing - Oct. 25-27
- Info

- Mihai A. Petrovici chaired the Session 3 "Guides from nature: neuroscience, theoretical biology, complex systems"
- Walter Senn gave the keynote "A theoretical physics guide to neuroscience and cognition"
- Kevin Max gave the talk "Learning efficient backprojections cross cortical hierarchies in real time"
- Julian Göltz presented the poster "Gradient-based methods for spiking physical systems"

Human intelligence meets artificial intelligence workshop - Oct. 4-5 - Info

Mihai A. Petrovici was invited to present the talk "Computing with physics: Biological and bio-inspired intelligence"

Bernstein Conference 2023 - Sep. 26-29 - Info

- Katharina A. Wilmes gave the talk "Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits"
- Simon Brandt presented the poster "Prospective and Retrospective Coding in Cortical and Hippocampal Pyramidal Neurons"
- Arno Granier presented the poster "Reliability estimation and second-order prediction errors in cortical circuits"

New Contribution to a Preprint!

"Precision estimation and second-order prediction errors in cortical circuits" - See Publication

ICANN: Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning - Sep. 26-29 - Info

Kevin Max presented the talk "Learning Efficient Backprojections Across Cortical Hierarchies in Real Time"

Einstein Center for Neurosciences - NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence Student-run speaker series "Spikes - bug or feature" - Sep. 21
Mihai A. Petrovici was invited to present the lecture "Deep learning with spikes."

New lab member (September)

Welcome to Dr. Ismael Jaras, who is again joining the lab as a guest postdoc!

Jülich-Aachen Neuromorphic Computing Day - Aug.30 - Info

Mihai A. Petrovici gives his "New insights into the physics of computing"

New Contribution to a Preprint: normative approach postulating that uncertainty-weighted prediction errors are represented by layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons!

"Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits"
- See Publication

CNS*2023: Computational Neuroscience Meeting - July. 15-19 - Info

- Katharina A. Wilmes gave the talk "Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits"
- Mihai A. Petrovici gave the talk "Credit assignment in cortical structures"
- Kevin Max presented the poster "Learning efficient backprojections across cortical hierarchies in real time"
- Ben von Hünerbein presented the poster "Certainty-weighted integration of information in individual cortical neurons"

Lab Retreat in Langnau im Emmental - July 5-7

This year we invited our friends from the Theoretical Neuroscience group and it was another three days of science, brain-storming, sports, cooking and other team building exercises. As always, it was a lot of FUN!!

Manfred-Stärk-Symposium 2023 - Weggis - July. 2-4

Special symposium on Theoretical Neuroscience and Neuromorphic Computation dedicated to our generous benefactor Manfred Stärk and his foundation.

Cortical Computation 60th Birthday Colloquium in Honor of Prof. Walter Senn - June 15

Mihai A. Petrovici presented "Physics-inspired approaches to computational neuroscience"

Research Seminar at the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics - Bern - May 31
Mihai A. Petrovici was invited to give the talk "Computing with physics: Biological and bio-inspired intelligence."

Mihai became an Editorial Board Member of the Journal Research Directions: Bioelectronics - Info
Mihai A. Petrovici and Samit Chakrabarty wrote the following call:

"Is neuromorphic computing disruptive enough to 1) advance our understanding of the brain and 2) make the design and working of (bio)electronic devices efficient and scalable?" - See Publication

New Contribution to a Preprint: examine conceptual, technical, and ethical issues raised by the development and use of brain-inspired AI!

"A method for the ethical analysis of brain-inspired AI"
- See Publications

Capo Caccia Cognitive Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop - April 30 - May 14 - Info
Mihai A. Petrovici gave the talk "Energy-based approaches to neuronal dynamics and function" and Kevin Max "Latent Equilibrium and Phaseless Alignment Learning."

New contribution to a Preprint bringing together academia and industry members to define benchmarks for "brain-inspired" neuromorphic computing!

"NeuroBench: Advancing Neuromorphic Computing through Collaborative, Fair and Representative Benchmarking" - See Publication

Human Brain Project Summit 2023 - Mar. 28-31 - Info

Mihai A. Petrovici participated to the Session "The interplay of neuroscience and AI" and presented the talk: "Computing with physics: Learning from carbon and silicon".
Julian Göltz participated to the Session "Brain-inspired Robotics And Computing" and presented the talk "Fast and energy-efficient neuromorphic deep learning with first-spike times"

The Human Brain Project Podcast - Info
Mihai A. Petrovici talks about his research on intelligence, his experience of growing up in a family of physicists, and what he does for fun outside of work.

Listen to the podcast "The intersection of biological and artificial intelligence" on YouTube
and also on Spotify & Apple Podcasts

COSYNE Conference & Workshop - Mar. 9-14 - Info

Katharina Wilmes presented "Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits" during the workshop session "Top-down interactions in the neocortex: Structure, function, plasticity and models."

Swiss Computational Neuroscience Retreat 2023 - Feb. 1-3 - Info

Katharina Wilmes presented
"Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits".