The main fundamental research focus of the lab is in using computational modeling to gain insight into biological brain function. Thus, we study biologically-plausible brain models, and we compare the predictions of model simulations to empirical measurements from living systems. The brain subsystem towards which most of our efforts are focused is the visual system. Our modeling efforts range from fairly detailed models of small neuronal circuits, such as a single hypercolumn of orientation-selective neurons in primary visual cortex, to large-scale models embodying several million highly-simplified neurons to explore mechanisms of visual attention, gaze control, object recognition, and goal-oriented scene understanding. Further, we strive to employ modeling principles which are mathematically optimal in some task- and goal-dependent sense. Thus, we are interested in investigating the tasks and conditions for which the biological brain approaches the theoretical limits of information processing.
The main fundamental research focus of the lab is in using computational modeling to gain insight into biological brain function. Thus, we study biologically-plausible brain models, and we compare the predictions of model simulations to empirical measurements from living systems. The brain subsystem towards which most of our efforts are focused is the visual system. Our modeling efforts range from fairly detailed models of small neuronal circuits, such as a single hypercolumn of orientation-selective neurons in primary visual cortex, to large-scale models embodying several million highly-simplified neurons to explore mechanisms of visual attention, gaze control, object recognition, and goal-oriented scene understanding. Further, we strive to employ modeling principles which are mathematically optimal in some task- and goal-dependent sense. Thus, we are interested in investigating the tasks and conditions for which the biological brain approaches the theoretical limits of information processing.
