Tim Behrens
Computational Neuroscience Group
Oxford University

Abstraction and inference in the prefrontal hippocampal circuitry

The cellular representations and computations that allow rodents to navigate in space have been described with beautiful precision.  In this talk, I will show that some of these same computations can be found in humans doing tasks that appear very different from spatial navigation.  I will describe some theory that allows us to think about spatial and non-spatial problems in the same framework, and I will try to use this theory to give a new perspective on the beautiful spatial computations that inspired it.  The overall goal of this work is to find a framework where we can talk about complicated non-spatial inference problems with the same precision that is only currently available in space.

A pizza lunch will be served. Please note that this seminar will be held in the SAIL Room, rather than our usual location in Barchi Library.