BrAInspiration: What can AI learn from the brain?
Neuromodulators are signalling chemicals in the brain which control the emergence of adaptive learning and behaviour. Neuromodulators, including dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin and noradrenaline, operate on a spectrum of spatio-temporal scales in tandem and in opposition to reconfigure functions of biological neural networks and to regulate global cognition and state transition.
Although neuromodulators are important in shaping cognition, their phenomenology is yet to be fully realised in artificial neural networks (ANNs).
In this talk, Srikanth will first give an overview of the biological organising principles of neuromodulators in adaptive cognition and highlight the competition and cooperation across neuromodulators.
He will then discuss ongoing research on bio-inspired mechanisms of neuromodulatory function in ANNs and propose a computational framework to incorporate their diverse functional settings and inspire new architectures of “neuromodulation-aware” ANNs.
About the speaker:
Dr Srikanth Ramaswamy is a Marie Curie Fellow, a Lister Prize Fellow and a Professor in computational neuroscience and AI at Newcastle University.
He is also a Fulbright Scholar at MIT and a Theoretical Sciences Scholar at OIST. He directs the Neural Circuits Laboratory at Newcastle University. His research focuses on the role of neuromodulators in shaping cognition in biological neural networks and building biologically-informed neural network models. He is a founding scientist of the Blue Brain Project at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
He earned his PhD at the EPFL in computational neuroscience, where he developed data-driven modelling frameworks for biologically detailed digital models of neural networks.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramaswamysrikanth/
To attend online:
Add to calendar: https://shorturl.at/gnk8V
Gmeet link: https://meet.google.com/uyj-szhn-gpq
Pre-read:
Look forward to see you!