“Structure in neural population recordings: An expected byproduct of simpler phenomena?”

Elsayed GF, Cunningham JP. Nature Neuroscience volume 20, pages1310–1318 (2017)

The Systems Journal Club has spirited discussions of recent systems neuroscience papers, covering sensory, motor and cognitive issues.

Elsayed and Cunningham proposed new methods to test the novelty of population-level findings against simpler features such as correlations across times, neurons and conditions.

This Friday, we will talk about “population-level” analysis of neural activity.

Suppose a fancy new analysis method reveals a surprising form of population-level organization in your large-scale neural data set. How can you tell if the observed pattern is truly surprising? Is it the hallmark of a population-level mechanism that reveals the circuit’s true function, or is it merely an expected byproduct of things we already knew from the features of single-neuron responses? To put it bluntly: when are findings of population-level structure ‘new science’ and when are they merely old knowledge dressed up in new clothes?

If you have questions about schedule, food, computer setup, and the like, please email Yuma Kanazawa and Waleed Babar.

Pizza at 11:45a.

Full schedule and archives, Systems Journal Club

For inquiries or to be added to the journal club list, contact Camillo Padoa-Schioppa or Larry Snyder (WashU Neuroscience).