[CTN] CTN Special Seminar - William Bechtel Dec 5., 4pm

[Chris Eliasmith]

There is a special CTN seminar scheduled next *Monday
Dec 5th at 4pm* in the CTN (PAS 2083).  The speaker is William
Bechtel from the UCSD philosophy department:
http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/

Title: Deciphering the neural code: The tale of place cells

Abstract:
While neuroscientists often characterize brain activity as 
representational, many philosophers have construed this as just a 
theorist’s gloss on the mechanism. Such philosophical discussions 
commonly treat neuroscience accounts as finished accounts. I adopt a 
different perspective, considering how characterizations of neural 
activity as representational contributes to the development of 
mechanistic accounts, guiding the questions neuroscientists ask as they 
work from an initial proposal to develop a more detailed understanding 
of a mechanism. In this talk I develop one illustrative example 
involving research on the information processing mechanisms mammals 
employ in navigating their environments. This research was galvanized by 
the discovery in the 1970s of place cells in the hippocampus. This 
discovery prompted research about how place representations are 
constructed in the relevant hippocampal neurons and how they figure in 
navigation. It also led to the discovery of a host of other types of 
neurons -- grid cells, head-direction cells, boundary cells -- that 
interact with place cells in the mechanism underlying spatial 
navigation. As I will try to make clear, the research is explicitly 
devoted to identifying representations and determining how they are 
constructed and used. Talking of representations is not a mere gloss but 
is understood realistically by the neuroscientists.