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The Computational Brain

Instructor: Dana H. Ballard

Office Hours: Wednesday 1-3 or by appointment

Office: TAY 4.115D

Extension: 1-9750

TA: Rahul Iyer

e-mail: dana@cs.utexas.edu

Course Overview

One of our major scientific challenges of the century is to understand the functioning of the human brain. Computational models play a vital role in a complete picture of brain function, particularly at modeling more macroscopic structures that more directly relate to our everyday behavior. The goal of this course is to describe computational models of intelligent behavior and how they relate to structures in the brain.

Students will have a mathematical background sufficient to grasp the ideas behind learning algorithms. This would include calculus and some linear algebra. Students will write short evaluations of scientific papers and popular science books in the area of computaional brain science.

A total of thirteen papers will be required, each of 1-2 pages in length. Papers must be submitted electronically in Word format.

SYLLABUS

Week DateRead Topic Assignment Best Paper
1 1/15 Introduction Anderson
2 1/22 Introduction Anderson Sherman
3 1/29 Brain Overview Wilson Sexton
4 2/5 Neurons ReynoldsGreen
5 2/12 Cortex Tanifuji CAM P1 P3 P2 P4
6 2/19 RAMACHANDRAN BOOK REVIEWRL
7 2/26 Basal Ganglia Reward TD-Gammon HelicopterRL Andrew's Tape
8 3/4 MONTAGUE BOOK REVIEW Walter1 PPT
9 3/18 Embodiment Vis Routines Embodiment Walter1 PPT Xue PPT
10 3/25 Operating System Ballard ACT-R Yi Paper
11 4/1 Emotions Adjudicate between the following two papers Damasio , McCelland PPT Brazeal movies
12 4/8 Hominids Miller Book Review GP tapes
13 4/15 LAB WEEK Lab Report Out of Body #1 Out of Body #2
14 4/22 Altruism Hauert
15 4/29 Consciousness Wegner Book Review