News Archive (2023 - 2022)
2023
New Preprint!
"The conductor model of consciousness, our neuromorphic twins, and the human-AI deal"
-> Publication
Interview of Katharina Wilmes, a postdoc in our lab!
New Review!
"Learning beyond sensations: how dreams organize neuronal representations"
-> 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!
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.
-> 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"
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 Preprint!
"Precision estimation and second-order prediction errors in cortical circuits"
-> Publication
ICANN: Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning - Sep. 26-29 - Info
New Article in PNAS on dendritic multitask learning!
"NMDA-driven dendritic modulation enables multitask representation learning in hierarchical sensory processing pathways"
-> Publication
New Preprint: a normative approach postulating that uncertainty-weighted prediction errors are represented by layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons!
"Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits"
-> Publication
CNS*2023: Computational Neuroscience Meeting - July. 15-19 - Info
- Katharina A. Wilmes
gave the talk "Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits"
- 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
New Preprint applies the neural least-action principle to motor control!
"A neuronal least-action principle for real-time learning in cortical circuits"
-> Publication
Human Brain Project Summit 2023 - Mar. 28-31 - Info
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."
New contribution to the Journal of Sleep Research!
"Feasibility, efficacy, and functional relevance of automated auditory closed-loop suppression of slow-wave sleep in humans"
-> Publication
Swiss Computational Neuroscience Retreat 2023 - Feb. 1-3 - Info
Katharina Wilmes
presented
"Uncertainty-modulated prediction errors in cortical microcircuits".
2022
New Preprint: (PAL), a bio-plausible method to learn efficient feedback weights!
"Learning efficient backprojections across cortical hierarchies in real time"
-> Publication
New Preprint! Dendritic modulation for implementing contextual adaptation.
"Dendritic modulation enables multitask representation learning in hierarchical sensory processing pathways"
-> Publication
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
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:"
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
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."
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!
- "Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons" presented by Paul Haider.
- "Biological multi-task learning with top-down signals presented by Matthias Tsai.
- "Uncertainty-weighted prediction errors (UPEs) in cortical microcircuits" presented by Katharina Wilmes.
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