Presidential Lectures are a series of free public colloquia spotlighting groundbreaking research across four themes: neuroscience and autism science, physics, biology, and mathematics and computer science. These curated, high-level scientific talks feature leading scientists and mathematicians and are designed to foster discussion and drive discovery within the New York City research community. We invite those interested in these topics to join us for this weekly lecture series.
The fundamental components of representation and communication in the brain are forgetful and noisy. How does the brain overcome these features to perform accurate computation and generate reliable short-term memory? Ila Fiete will discuss how recent discoveries finally substantiate classical theoretical ideas, while simultaneously showing that neural codes go far beyond our current theoretical understanding. She will argue that it is time to develop and apply information-theoretic principles specific to coding in the noisy brain.