Up: Dana's Home page

The Computational Brain

Instructor: Dana H. Ballard

Office Hours: Wednesday 10-12 or by appointment

Office: 406

Extension:

e-mail: dana@ee.usyd.edu.au

Course Overview

One of our major scientific challenges of the century is to understand the functioning of the human brain. Computational models play a vital role in a complete picture of brain function, particularly at modeling more macroscopic structures that more directly relate to our everyday behavior. The goal of this course is to describe computational models of intelligent behavior and how they relate to structures in the brain.

Week DateRead Topic Assignment MATLAB Lec Mtl
1 10 Mar Introduction Rev:Ch1TM Simulation None
2 17 Mar Brain Overview Rev:Ch2;Optional: Penrose critique'Whiten' Image PPT
3 24 Mar Neurons Rev:Ch3Receptive Fields PPT
4 31 Mar Cortex Rev:Ch4 CAM P1 P3 P2 P4 PPT
5 7 Apr Basal Ganglia Rev:Ch5RL Andrew's Tape
6 28 Apr Embodiment Rev:Ch6Embodiment Walter1 PPT Xue PPT
7 5 May OS Rev:Ch7 Yi Paper Walter 2 PPT
8 12 May Emotions Rev:Ch8 Damasio , Rolls PPT Brazeal movies
9 May 19 Hominids Rev:Ch10Hominids GP tapes
10 May 26 Altruism Rev:Ch11 Hauert Game Thy
10 Jun 2 Consciousness Rev:Ch12 None