CIS 6930, Introduction to Computational Neuroscience, Spring 2004

Place:E121
Time:Tuesday 10 (5:10-6:00 p.m.) and Thursday 10,11 (5:10-7:05 p.m.)

Instructor:
Prof. Arunava Banerjee
Office: CSE E436.
E-mail: arunava@cise.ufl.edu.
Phone: 392-6849.
Office hours: Wednesday 2:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. or by appointment.

Pre-requisites:

Textbook: Theoretical Neuroscience, Dayan and Abbott, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-04199-5.
Neuroscience Reference: Fundamental Neuroscieence, Zigmond, Bloom, Landis, Roberts, and Squire, Academic Press, ISBN 0-12-780870-1.

The goal of Computational Neuroscience is to acquire a formal understanding of how the brain works. This course is aimed at giving an overview of the field. In addition to particular issues, we shall take a tour through some essential neurobiology and a couple of mathematical areas. The targeted audience is students who wish to conduct research in this field, although any body interested in acquainting themselves with the area is welcome to attend. Although there will be a text that we shall (loosely) follow (Theoretical Neuroscience by Dayan & Abbott; available as an e-book thru the UF library system), a large portion of the course will involve material from disparate sources (other books, articles etc.)

Please return to this page at least once a week to check updates in the table below

Spring classes end on Apr 21st. Final Project due on Apr 20th (Tuesday)

Final Project due date extended to Monday Apr 26th.

Evaluation:

The final grade will be on the curve.

Course Policies:

Academic Dishonesty: See http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial/honestybrochure.htm for Academic Honesty Guidelines. All academic dishonesty cases will be handled through the University of Florida Honor Court procedures as documented by the office of Student Services, P202 Peabody Hall. You may contact them at 392-1261 for a "Student Judicial Process: Guide for Students" pamphlet.

Students with Disabilities: Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the Instructor when requesting accommodation.

List of Topics covered
Week Topic Reading Assignment
Jan 4 - Jan 10
  • Course Overview. Powerpoint slides can be found here.
  • Basic Neurobiology. Powerpoint slides can be found here.
Jan 11 - Jan 17
  • Neuro Electronics. Powerpoint slides can be found here.
  • Readings: Chapters 5 and 6 of the text.
  • Introductory Reading for the lecture can be found here.
Homework 1 due Feb 5.
Jan 18 - Jan 24
  • Neuro Electronics continued.
  • Reduced model of a neuron (Conductance based, Integrate and Fire)
  • Rate based neuron, Perceptron.
  • Basic Topology
  • Readings: Chapters 5 and 6 of the text.
Part I of Theoretical Project due.
Jan 25 - Jan 31
  • Formal Analysis of Systems of neurons. Powerpoint slides can be found here.
Feb 1 - Feb 7
  • Machine Learning
  • Readings: Chapters 4 Machine Learing by Mitchell
Feb 8 - Feb 14
  • Perceptrons, Feed Forward Nets and Error Back Propagation
Homework 2 due Mar 2.
Feb 15 - Feb 21
  • Information Theory
  • Chapter 4 of the text.
Feb 22 - Feb 28
  • Lebesgue Integration theory and the Dominated Convergence Theorem.
Feb 29 - Mar 6
  • Dynamical System Theory: Introduction
Homework 3 due Mar 18.
Mar 7 - Mar 13
  • Spring break
Mar 14 - Mar 20
  • Hopfield Nets.
  • Dynamical System Theory: Dynamical System for Systems of spiking Neurons, fixed points, periodic orbits, etc.
Mar 21 - Mar 27
  • Dynamical System Theory: Non-wandering set, wandering set, attractors.
  • Discrete time Stochastic Processes
Mar 28 - Apr 3
  • Signals and Systems.
  • Birkhoff's ergodic theorem
Apr 4 - Apr 10
  • Signals and Systems.
Volterra Series.
Apr 11 - Apr 20
  • Signals and Systems.
Fourier Series, experimental neuroscience.