Department of Physiology

News Archive

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2022

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

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

New Preprint! Dendritic modulation for implementing contextual adaptation.

"Dendritic modulation enables multitask representation learning in hierarchical sensory processing pathways".
See Publications

Bernstein Conference - Sep. 13-16 - Info

Two talks

Paul Haider presented «Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons». For more details, read the related article.
Katharina Wilmes presented «Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits».

And a poster

Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo presented «Neural oscillations implement tempering in spiking neural networks».

Manfred-Stärk-Symposium 2022 - Lavaux - Sep. 11-12

Special symposium on theoretical neuroscience and neuromorphic computation dedicated to our generous benefactor Manfred Stärk and his foundation.

Nacht der Forschung 2022 - Info
We were delighted to be among the 750 researchers from the University of Bern who presented their research to tens of thousands of people.

Visitors to our stand got an insight into learning in neural networks and neuromorphic engineering by experiencing the dynamics of real biological neurons using our in-house electronic neuron circuit. The public could also compete against an AI by playing the puzzle game Tic Tac Toe, also known as Noughts and Crosses.

CNS*2022 - Computational Neuroscience Meeting - July 16-20 - Info
Paul Haider gave two presentations: one at the main conference and the other at the workshop "Bio-inspired active AI workshop:"

"Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons" and
"Bio-inspired AI and AI-inspired biology."

Sinergia Meeting at the Gurten (July 5)
The last meeting of the consortium funded by the SNSF Sinergia grant on
"Neural Processing of Distinct Prediction Errors."

We enjoyed working with the groups of Fritjof Helmchen, Giacomo Indiveri, and Simon Sprecher in such a fruitful collaboration!

Lab Retreat in Kandersteg - June 7-10

Four days of science, brain-storming, metaphysical debates, sports, cooking and other chocolate testing. It was a lot of FUN!!

New lab members (May)
Welcome to our new Research Assistant (Internship): Simon Brandt ,
PhD student: Lukas Huber and Master student: Luc Lerch
Brandt Huber Lerch

New article in eLife: how natural-gradient descent enable efficient synaptic plasticity!

"Natural-gradient learning for spiking neurons".
See Publication

From Cortical Microcircuits to Consciousness Symposium - Apr 11-13 - Info

Walter Senn, also the Scientific Chair of the symposium, presented the talk
"Creative sleep, adversarial dreams, and the need of awareness."
Nicolas Deperrois presented the poster "Learning cortical representations through perturbed and adversarial dreaming."
Arno Granier presented the poster "The geometry of precision in predictive coding."

corticon

eLife Article: Learning across three different global brain states!

"Learning cortical representations through perturbed and adversarial dreaming".
See Publication - More on GANs

From Neuroscience to Artificially Intelligent Systems (NAISys) - Apr 5-9 - Info

Paul Haider presented the poster "Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons."

New contribution to PCB: How cortical oscillations shape spike-based probabilistic inference in the brain!

"Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks" - Publication.

COSYNE Conference & Workshop - Mar 17-22 - Info
Three Posters!

Swiss Computational Neuroscience Retreat 2022 - Mar. 2-4 - Info
Two Talks:

Jakob Jordan "Cortical representation learning & Bayes-optimal cue integration"
Paul Haider "Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons"

6th HBP Student Conference on Interdisciplinary Brain Research - Feb. 22-25 - Info
Two poster presentations:

Ben von Hünerbein "Towards fully embedded biologically inspired deep learning on neuromorphic hardware"
Henrik Mettler "Evolving Neuronal Plasticity Rules using Cartesian Genetic Programming" - Recipient of the People’s Choice Best Abstract Award

2021

New contribution to NeurIPS: Learning with slow neurons is not a problem anymore!
- Info - The work of Paul Haider was selected for oral presentation at the 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021)!

"Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons" - Publication - Press Release

New contribution to eLife: Evolving to Learn!

"Evolving interpretable plasticity for spiking network" - Publication -
eLife Digest - Press Release

CRS2021 - Champalimaud Research Symposium - Oct. 15 - Info

Talk by Walter Senn "Least action principle and error-based learning in the brain."

ACAIN 2021 - 1st International Advanced Course & Symposium on Artificial Intelligence & Neuroscience - Oct. 5-8 - Info

Five talk presentations:

Jakob Jordan "Learning Bayes-optimal dendritic opinion pooling."
Katharina Wilmes "Learning to predict in uncertainty."
Henrik Mettler "Evolving to Learn: Automating the search for interpretable, biologically plausible synaptic plasticity rules."
Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo "Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural network."
Julian Göltz and Laura Kriener "Fast and energy-efficient neuromorphic deep learning with first-spike times."

Manfred-Stärk-Symposium 2021 - Grandhotel Giessbach - Sep. 26-28

Special symposium on theoretical neuroscience and neuromorphic computation dedicated to our generous benefactor Manfred Stärk and his foundation.

Bernstein Conference - Sep. 13 - 16 - Info

Nicolas Deperrois presented the Poster "Creative memory semantization through adversarial dreaming."
For more details, read the related preprint on arXiv.

2nd PhD and Postdoc Retreat of the Department of Physiology - Sep. 10 - Info

Congrats to Henrik and Jakob for winning two of the Idorsia prizes for academic excellence for best presentations, respectively, for best Long talk - Early PhDs and Popular Vote!

New Preprint! Learning across three different global brain states!

"Memory semantization through perturbed and adversarial dreaming" - See Publications

New lab member (August)
Welcome to our new Postdoc: Dr. Katharina Wilmes !

GECCO 2021 - The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference July 12 - Info

Henrik Mettler presented the Poster
"Evolving Neuronal Plasticity Rules using Cartesian Genetic Programming"

Read our Succes Story on using the Fenix Supercomputing Infrastructure!

"HPC Simulations Support Fast and Energy Efficient Deep Neuromorphic Learning" - See Article

CNS*2021 - Computational Neuroscience Meeting - July 4 - Info

Andreas Baumbach presented the Featured Oral "Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks" -> Recording (first talk of the video)

New lab members (June)
We are thrilled to welcome Arno Granier to our PhD program and to have
Ben von Hünerbein continue as a PhD student!
arno bvh