TSVP Symposium: Neuromodulation of Adaptive Learning

Title: Neuromodulation of Adaptive Learning: Bridging Biological and Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract: Neuromodulators, including dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, noradrenaline and histamine, through their diffuse release regulate local microcircuit and global meso-scale connectivity in biological neural networks to catalyze learning, and boost adaptation to rapidly changing contexts. Although deep neural networks (DNNs) have demonstrated their effectiveness in solving a wide spectrum of real-world tasks ranging from pattern recognition to autonomous driving vehicles, they however, remain ineffective in adaptive and meta-learning to execute simultaneous tasks and are prone to “catastrophic forgetting”, contrary to their biological counterparts.
The goal of this symposium is to describe the organizing properties of neuromodulatory systems, which enable learning and task-switching across multiple spatio-temporal scales - from microcircuits to mesocircuits - in biological neural networks. By bringing together experimentalists and theoreticians, this symposium will specifically explore how neuromodulators impact the cellular and synaptic assembly of neural networks across invertebrate and vertebrate brains, and implement their organizing rules and principles in DNNs to enhance adaptive learning capabilities and overcome catastrophic forgetting.

Linked to Thematic Program: Neuromodulation of Adaptive Learning: Theoretical Lessons Learned From Invertebrate and Vertebrate Brains

Schedule (tentative)

Monday, July 8: Arrival Day and start of symposium
July 9-11: Scientific Sessions
Friday, July 12: Discussions and Departure

Program coordinators

Prof Srikanth Ramaswamy, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Prof Arvind Kumar, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Prof Upi Bhalla, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India
Prof Vatsala Thirumalai, National Institute of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India