Speaker: Prof. Peter Neri, Ecole Normale Supérieure
Title: Classified noise: neurons versus people, blobs versus scenes, tones versus speech – can we put it all together?
Answer: no, or at least not yet. I will discuss a wide range of applications for reverse-correlation methods, spanning an equally wide range of daunting interpretational challenges. Although very substantial progress has been made over the past 20 years in characterizing and understanding results from reversecorrelation experiments, I will highlight how much is still unresolved when attempting conceptual leaps between circuits and behaviour, artificial stimuli and natural statistics, vision and audition. It is tempting to make these connections on the basis of data-rich and seemingly transparent characterizations of the sensory process such as those typically returned by reverse correlating noise, but a closer look at the technicalities involved prompts caution and the need for more experimental as well as theoretical work.