E47: Deep Learning to Understand the Brain

The recent advances in deep learning have done more than just make money for startups and tech companies. They've also infiltrated neuroscience! Deep neural networks---models originally inspired by the basics of the nervous system---are finding ever more applications in the quest to understand the brain. We talk about many of those uses in the episode. After first describing more traditional approaches to modeling behavior, we talk about how neuroscientists compare deep net models to real brains using both performance and neural activity. We then get into the attempts by the field of machine learning to understand their own models and how ML and neuroscience can share methods (and maybe certain cultural tendencies). Finally we talk about the use of deep nets to generate stimuli specifically tailored to drive real neurons to their extremes. Throughout, we notice how deep learning is "complicating the narrative", ask "are deep nets normative models?", and struggle to talk about a topic we actually know about.

You can listen to E47: Deep Learning to Understand the Brain online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

E47: Deep Learning to Understand the Brain is an episode from Unsupervised Thinking by Neuro Collective.

This episode is 1:05:00 long.

This episode was published on Jul 30, 2019.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Unsupervised Thinking when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.