James A. Bednar
Postdoctoral Alumni, Ph.D. Alumni, Masters Alumni, Undergraduate Alumni
Jim's work focuses on computational modeling of cortical maps. He did his undergraduate, masters, and doctoral dissertations with the NNRG, and was a postdoc here for a couple of years before joining the faculty at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a co-author of the "Computational Maps in the Visual Cortex" book, and the lead author of the Topographica software package for simulating cortical maps. He was also a co-advisor for Judah De Paula's dissertation.
Homepage:
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jbednar
Publications
     [Expand to show all 25][Minimize]
Developing Complex Systems Using Evolved Pattern Generators 2007
Vinod K. Valsalam, James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (2007), pp. 181-198.
Establishing an Appropriate Learning Bias Through Development 2006
Vinod K. Valsalam, James A. Bednar, and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-2006) 2006.
Joint Maps for Orientation, Eye, and Direction Preference in a Self-Organizing Model of V1 2006
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 69 (2006), pp. 1272--1276.
Prenatal Development of Ocular Dominance and Orientation Maps in a Self-Organizing Model of V1 2006
Stefanie Jegelka, James A. Bednar, and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 69 (2006), pp. 1291--1296.
Constructing Good Learners Using Evolved Pattern Generators 2005
Vinod K. Valsalam, James A. Bednar, and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2005, H.-G. Beyer and others (Eds.), pp. 11-18 2005.
Constructing Visual Function Through Prenatal and Postnatal Learning 2005
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, In Neuroconstructivism, Vol. 2: Perspectives and Prospects, Denis Mareschal and Mark H. Johnson and Sylvain Sirois and Michael Spratling and Michael S. C. Thomas and Gert Westermann (Eds.), pp....
Self-organization of color opponent receptive fields and laterally connected orientation maps 2005
James A. Bednar, Judah B. De Paula, and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 65--66 (2005), pp. 69-76.
Modeling Cortical Maps with Topographica 2004
James A. Bednar, Yoonsuck Choe, Judah De Paula, Risto Miikkulainen, Jefferson Provost, and Tal Tversky, Neurocomputing (2004), pp. 1129-1135.
Prenatal and Postnatal Development of Laterally Connected Orientation Maps 2004
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 58-60 (2004), pp. 985-992.
Learning Innate Face Preferences 2003
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, Neural Computation, Vol. 15, 7 (2003), pp. 1525-1557.
Self-Organization of Spatiotemporal Receptive Fields and Laterally Connected Direction and Orientation Maps 2003
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 52--54 (2003), pp. 473-480.
The Role of Internally Generated Neural Activity in Newborn and Infant Face Preferences 2003
James A. Bednar, In Face Perception in Infancy and Early Childhood, Olivier Pascalis and Alan Slater (Eds.), pp. 133-142, New York 2003. NOVA Science Publishers.
Learning to See: Genetic and Environmental Influences on Visual Development 2002
James A. Bednar, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Also Technical Report AI-TR-02-294.
Modeling Large Cortical Networks With Growing Self-Organizing Maps 2002
James A. Bednar, Amol Kelkar, and Risto Miikkulainen, Neurocomputing, Vol. 44--46 (2002), pp. 315-321.
Neonatal Learning Of Faces: Environmental And Genetic Influences 2002
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 107-112 2002.
Scaling Self-Organizing Maps To Model Large Cortical Networks 2001
James A. Bednar, Amol Kelkar, and Risto Miikkulainen, Neuroinformatics (2001), pp. 275-302.
Internally-Generated Activity, Non-Episodic Memory, and Emotional Salience in Sleep 2000
James A. Bednar, Behavioral and Brain SciencesS. Harnad and E. Pace-Schott and M. Blagrove and M. Solms (Eds.) (2000), pp. 119-120. Cambridge University Press. Commentary on the 'Sleep and Dreaming' issue..
Self-Organization Of Innate Face Preferences: Could Genetics Be Expressed Through Learning? 2000
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, In Proceedings of the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 12th Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, pp. 117-122 2000.
Tilt Aftereffects In A Self-Organizing Model Of The Primary Visual Cortex 2000
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, Neural Computation, Vol. 12 (2000), pp. 1721-1740.
A Self-Organizing Neural Network Model of the Primary Visual Cortex 1998
Risto Miikkulainen, James Bednar, Yoonsuck Choe, and Joseph Sirosh, In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP'98), Volume 2, S. Usui, T. Omori (Eds.), pp. 815-818, Kitakyushu, Japan 1998.
Pattern-Generator-Driven Development In Self-Organizing Models 1998
James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen, In Computational Neuroscience: Trends in Research, 1998, pp. 317-323 1998.
Self-Organization, Plasticity, and Low-Level Visual Phenomena in a Laterally Connected Map Model of the Primary Visual Cortex 1997
Risto Miikkulainen, James A. Bednar, Yoonsuck Choe, and Joseph Sirosh, In Perceptual Learning, R. L. Goldstone and P. G. Schyns and D. L. Medin (Eds.), pp. 257-308 1997.
Tilt Aftereffects in a Self-Organizing Model of the Primary Visual Cortex 1997
James A. Bednar, Masters Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Technical Report AI97-259.
Self-Organization of Orientation Maps, Lateral Connections, and Dynamic Receptive Fields in the Primary Visual Cortex 1996
Joseph Sirosh, Risto Miikkulainen and James A. Bednar, In {P}roceedings of the {I}nternational {C}onference {on} {A}rtificial {N}eural {N}etworks, Joseph Sirosh and Risto Miikkulainen and Yoonsuck Choe (Eds.), pp. 1147-1152, Berlin 1996. Springer...
Multi-Level Neural Network Language Translator 1993
James A. Bednar, Technical Report HR-93-01, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.
Projects
Developing Complex Systems Using Evolved Pattern Generators 2004 - 2006
Self-Organization of Directional Selectivity 1999 - 2002
GLISSOM: Modeling Large Cortical Maps 1999 - 2001
Self-Organization Driven by Internally-Generated Patterns 1997 - 2002
Tilt Aftereffects in the RF-LISSOM Model 1996 - 2000
Orientation Perception in the RF-LISSOM Model 1995 - 2000
Self-Organization in the Primary Visual Cortex: The RF-LISSOM Model 1995 - 1997
Computational Maps in the Visual Cortex 1987 - 2009
Areas of Interest
Cognitive Science Computational Neuroscience Visual Cortex
Software/Data
LISSOM

The LISSOM package contains the C++, Python, and Scheme source code and examples for training and testing firing-rate...

2004
Demos
Handwritten Digit Recognition Utilizing Evolved Pattern GeneratorsVinod Valsalam2007
Labs
Formerly affiliated with Neural Networks