Stochastic dynamics of small networks of neurons

February 20 to February 24, 2012

at the

American Institute of Mathematics, San Jose, California

organized by

Victoria Booth, Priscilla Greenwood, and Rachel Kuske

Original Announcement

This workshop will be devoted to the area between carefully crafted stochastic models of single neurons and large networks of simpler ones. We will combine 'realistically' modelled neurons into small, possibly two or three neuron or slightly larger networks. The workshop will bring together people whose work has been on models of single neurons with others more concentrated on networks, to focus on this intermediate area.

The main topics for the workshop include

  1. What are useful constructions of small stochastic networks of neurons, in view of the interesting questions about larger networks? What questions on a small scale influence the larger scale?
  2. What are the distributional properties of the output of some specific small stochastic networks? Can they be derived from what we know about this question for single neurons?
  3. What sources of variability propagate through small networks and which will average out?

Material from the workshop

A list of participants.

The workshop schedule.

A report on the workshop activities.

Talks and group reports

Oscillations, Synchrony, and Noise in Neural Networks, talk by Ward.

The influence of network structure on neuronal network dynamics, talk by Nykamp.

Single Neuron Models: some ideas on the role of noise, talk by Sacerdote.

Normal forms, talk by Rubin

Stochastic Dynamics & Small Networks, talk by Nadim

Group 2: problem and results

Analytic results from Group 2