fast kalman filtering draft

hi all, any comments on this draft we just finished would be very welcome.

Carl Smith : Dec 15

This Wednesday I'll pick up where we left off last week when we covered graphical models, exponential families, and the basic ideas behind variational inference. This week I will go over variational inference in greater depth, and then describe some approximations to the variational problem that render it tractable: sum-product and the Bethe entropy approximation; mean field methods (time permitting); and convex approximations, in particular tree-reweighted belief propagation. The material is drawn from chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 of the same paper.

Yashar Ahmadian : Dec 8

Designing optimal stimuli to control neuronal spike timing

We develop fast methods for optimal control of spike times by stimulating neurons. We 

adopt an approach based on models which describe how a stimulating agent (such as an 

injected electrical current, or a laser light interacting with caged neurotransmitters or pho- 

tosensitive ion channels) affect the spiking activity of neurons. Based on these models, we 

solve the reverse problem of finding the best time-dependent modulation of the input, sub- 

ject to hardware limitations as well as physiologically inspired safety measures, that makes 

the neuron emit a spike train which with highest probability will be close to a target spike 

train. We adopt fast convex constrained optimization methods to solve this problem. Our 

methods can potentially be implemented in real time and are also generalizable to the case 

of many cells, suitable for neural prosthesis applications. Using biologically sensible param- 

eters and constraints, our method finds stimulation patterns that generate very precise spike 

trains in simulated experiments. We also tested the intracellular current injection method 

on pyramidal cells in mouse cortical slices, achieving sub-milisecond spike timing precision 

and high reliability with constrained currents.

cosyne abstracts

hey, our submitted cosyne abstracts are here - any feedback on any of these would be very welcome.