BCCN 2015 Workshop Ready, Set, Go - Anticipation, Timing and Action in Spiking Neural Networks

The ability to react, anticipate and predict is vital for all kinds of creatures from fireflies to humans. Likewise, it is becoming an essential feat for robots as well. The way in which animals behave and interact with natural, dynamical, unstructured environments is far superior to today’s technical, engineered autonomous robots - there is much to be learned from brains and natural neural networks.

The workshop will cover different neural representations of time, e.g. in the cerebellum and the medial prefrontal cortex, which we will discuss from a neural engineering viewpoint. We will learn about new experimental data along with corresponding neural simulations to highlight the underlying mechanisms. We will compare the merits of different neural approaches to interval timing, event anticipation and action sequencing and discuss their relevance and applicability in technical domains, such as robotics.

First, the aim of the workshop is to get an overview and understanding of neural mechanisms for interval timing and action sequencing, a timely research field in neurobiology and theoretical neuroscience. Second, we want to bring together researchers from neurobiology, computational neuroscience, neural engineering and technology to foster mutual exchange and collaboration between those fields.

Speakers and Planned Schedule