CCN talk: March 14, 2025
Chris Eliasmith
Professor, University of Waterloo, Canada
Time: 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Location: Moore Hall, 2nd floor, Consortium for Interacting Minds
The algebra of cognition
Abstract: In recent years, my lab and others have demonstrated the value of vector symbolic algebras (VSAs) for capturing a wide variety of neural and behavioural results. In this talk I discuss the surprising and compelling variety of tasks and styles of reasoning that are well-suited to descriptions using a specific VSA. These tasks include path integration, navigation, Bayesian reasoning, sampling, memorization, and logical inference. The resulting spiking neural network models capture various hippocampal cell types (grid, place, border, etc.), behavioural errors, and a variety of observed neural dynamics.