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

Registration

Register here (Deadline: June 24, 2024)

Symposium Organizers

Srikanth Ramaswamy, Newcastle University, UK / TSVP Scholar
Arvind Kumar, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Upi Bhalla, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India
Vatsala Thirumalai, National Centre for Biological Sciences, India

Invited Participants

Joshua Johansen, RIKEN Center for Brain Science
Ayaka Kato, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Thomas John McHugh, RIKEN Center for Brain Science
Jie Mei, The University of Tokyo, IRCN
Kenji Morita, The University of Tokyo
Thomas Parr, Oxford University
James Shine, The University of Sydney
Gilad Daniel Silberberg, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida, Harvard University
Naoshige Uchida, Harvard University
Josh Goldberg, Hebrew University
Shervin Safavi, TU Dresden
Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama, OIST
Erik De Schutter, OIST
Kenji Doya, OIST
Katsuhiko Miyazaki, OIST
Izumi Fukunaga, OIST
Kayoko Miyazaki, OIST
Jeff Wickens, OIST
Tomoki Fukai, OIST
Bernd Kuhn, OIST
Yukiko Goda, OIST
Sam Reiter, OIST
Jun Tani, OIST

Schedule

Day 1 (8th July)

Day 2 (9th July)

Day 3 (10th July)