Cosyne Workshop: 100 years of spikes – but why?

[Tobias Kühn]

Dear participants of the Cosyne conference,

we are excited to announce our workshop on March 17 in Cascais, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Lord Adrian's publication of the first clear evidence of what is now known as action potential in the nervous system. While there is no doubt that they exist, their role in metabolism, representation of information and computation is still unclear. What is their unique functional role? Under what conditions is a discrete presentation of information optimal? Are spikes even advantageous for the design of artificial neural networks? Or are they rather evolutionary quick fixes? With electrophysiological and morphological data of unprecedented quality we are now in the position to newly address these decades-old questions. 

We invite you to discuss them with our speakers, who will touch upon them from perspectives ranging from biology to neuromorphic computing. Find the schedule and abstracts on the workshop homepage.

See you in Cascais!

Best wishes,

Jean-Pascal and Tobias