Numenta / Interview With a Neuroscientist

In this episode, host Matt Taylor chats with Numenta Visiting Research Scientist Florian Fiebig. Florian is a recent graduate from the KTH Royal Institute of technology in Stockholm, Sweden with a PhD in computational neuroscience. His PhD thesis focuses on Hebbian learning networks and he regularly presents his work at Numenta research meetings[1]. Florian’s thesis is titled, “Active Memory Processing on Multiple Timescales in Simulated Critical Networks with Hebbian Plasticity.”[2]

Show Notes
• 1:05 Intro to Florian
• 2:41 Florian’s background and what led him to Numenta
• 3:06 Continuous learning
• 9:30 Does deep learning have anything similar to Hebbian learning?
• 11:36 Different types of plasticity in Hebbian learning
• 11:55 Long-term Potentiation (LTP)
• 14:38 “So it turns out: Short-term potentiation is not always short-term potentiation”
• 15:47 Two fast forms of plasticity: facilitation and augmentation
• 17:57 Homeostatic mechanisms: the Bobcat example
• 19:41 Let’s talk about working memory
• 21:21 Associative nature of memory
• 26:46 The brain as a massive filter
• 28:16 Episodic memory vs. semantic memory
• 30:38 Non-declarative memories
• 32:47 How does the transfer process of initially acquired memory into something that is longer lasting work?
• 35:05 The keys to remembering: repetition and relevance
• 37:28 Attractors and dynamical systems
• 44:15 The cortical attractor theory of neocortex or neocortical memory
• 45:26 The binding problem
• 55:00 Closing

Download the full transcript of the podcast here.[3]

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[1] https://numenta.com/blog/2019/07/31/the-livestream-experiment-update
[2] http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1263428&dswid=-4633
[3] http://numenta.flywheelstaging.com/assets/pdf/numenta-on-intelligence-podcast/NOI-episode-14-conversation-with-florian-fiebig.pdf

In part 2 of this interview with Dr. Kording from the K-Lab at UPenn, Matt and Dr. Kording discuss motor representations in the brain, intentionality, time-warping in neurons, and causality.

Konrad Kording is a professor at University of Pennsylvania, known for his contributions to the fields of motor control, neural data methods, and computational neuroscience. He runs the Kording Lab, or K-Lab, which focused on computational neuroscience early on and now focuses on causality in data science applications. His lab has made an impact across many fields overtime, including Bayesian brains, causal effects in human behavior, and uncertainty in the brain.

Matt talks to a specialist in audition in the brain. Topics include motor projections, songbirds and songs, spatial aspects of sound, how your brain cancels the sounds you make as you move.

Matt and Carmen talk about the thalamus, hippocampus, sleep cycles, and brain waves.

Matt and Jonathan discuss how objects are represented in the brain, especially with respect to behavior and actions.

Thanks to Peer for being the first roboticist to be interviewed on HTM School. We talked about superpixels, hypervectors, long term robots, and how grid cells can be used for localization (ratslam). Here are links to some of the things we mentioned:

RatSLAM Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2w6kYzTbr8
OpenRatSLAM Code: https://code.google.com/archive/p/ratslam/

Flamingo Superpixel image from this blog: http://popscan.blogspot.com/2014/12/superpixel-algorithm-implemented-in-java.html

Dr. Jonas is a computer scientist and neuroscientist. He wrote a paper called "Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?" (http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005268).

We discuss lots of topics in this interview, including brain lesions, connectomes, and how neurons are like transistors. (Sorry, we did not have time to include the 4th topic I showed, "Brain Data Overload".)

Matt talks to retina specialist Dr. Michael Berry, of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. They discuss the optic nerve and the path its signal takes, how ideas are represented in neurons, and the complexity of light itself.

Matt interviews famous neuroscientist David Eagleman, bestselling author of INCOGNITO and host of the PBS series "The Brain". Matt and Dr. Eagleman discuss several neuroscience topics, including synesthesia, competing unconscious drives, the 2 hemispheres of the cortex, and the binary nature of brain communication.