The geometry of abstraction
Speaker: Stefano Fusi (Zuckerman Institute - Columbia University)
Tuesday Jun 27, 2023, 4:00 PM → 6:00 PM Europe/Rome
Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G.Marconi)
Description:
Neurons in the mammalian brain often exhibit complex, non-linear responses to multiple task variables (mixed selectivity). Despite the diversity of these responses, it is often possible to observe an interesting structure in the representational geometry: task-relevant variables tend to be encoded in approximately orthogonal subspaces.
This is a signature of low dimensional disentangled representations, it is typically the result of a process of abstraction, and it allows a linear readout to readily generalize to novel situations.
We show that these representations are observed in cognitive areas of the brain of human and non-human primates performing a variety of different tasks.
Link zoom: https://uniroma1.zoom.us/j/82330282429?pwd=MktKdmlkSUxxdXlraFhKSHhJTDZnUT09