Geometry Seminar

Date: March 24, 2017

Time: 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Location: BLOC 628

Speaker: Robert Williams, TAMU

Title: An introduction to convex neural codes

Abstract: The brain encodes spatial structure via special neurons called place cells which are associated with convex regions of space. We seek to answer the decoding problem that arises from this situation: knowing only the firing pattern of neurons, how can we tell if it corresponds to convex regions? We will introduce tools from algebra and geometry and show how they can be used to determine if a given neural code can arise from place cells. This talk is a practice talk for a job talk.