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GRASP Seminar Series: Fall 2005
October 28, 11:00 AM, 307 Levine Hall
Jean-Jacques Slotine
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Modularity, Synchronization, and the Brain”
Abstract: Although neurons as computational elements
are 7 orders of magnitude slower than their artificial counterparts, the
primate brain grossly outperforms robotic algorithms in all but the most
structured tasks. Parallelism alone is a poor explanation, and much recent
functional modelling of the central nervous system focuses on its modular,
heavily feedback-based computational architecture, the result of accumulation
of subsystems throughout evolution. We discuss this architecture from
a global stability and convergence point of view. We then study synchronization
as a model of computations at different scales in the brain, such as pattern
matching, temporal binding of sensory data, and mirror neuron response.
Finally, we derive a simple condition for a general dynamical system to
globally converge to a regime where multiple groups of fully synchronized
elements coexist. Applications of such "polyrhythms" to some
classical questions in systems neuroscience and robotics are discussed.
The development makes extensive use of nonlinear contraction theory,
a comparatively recent anaysis tool whose main features will be reviewed.
Biography: Jean-Jacques Slotine is Professor of Mechanical Engineering
and Information Sciences, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and
Director of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory at M.I.T.
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