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MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

nancysbraintalks.mit.edu

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Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#51

Post by THE_PUN_STOPS »

nancykanwisher wrote: post #41
akjetma wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to say thanks--I'm really enjoying these videos!

So glad to hear it, thank you. Do let me know if you encounter bits that are not clear or if you see ways the lectures could be improved. BTW the lectures were all originally 1 hour and 25 minutes - I just broke them into pieces because everyone tells me that is what web viewers like. Is that working for you guys, or would you prefer to watch a whole 1.5 hour lecture not broken into bits?

Perhaps it is my internet addled reward circuits, but I personally prefer the shorter videos for learning because it helps me compartmentalize and break down topics for understanding.

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#52

Post by nancykanwisher »

martinpw wrote: post #45
nancykanwisher wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! It means so much to me that some people are appreciating these lectures. I knocked myself out all spring preparing this course, and it was quite a gut punch to read my course evaluations a few days ago, which ere pretty negative. I was so dispirited, I was actually thinking of stopping posting the lectures, but if you guys/gals are into it, that is awesome,I will keep at it! To answer your question: yes we…

These lectures are fantastic, please don't stop! You mentioned David Marr's book. Given its age, I assume some parts have stood the test of time better than others - would you recommend reading it all or would you focus just on the first part you mentioned in the lecture? And are there other books you would recommend? (I haven't got very far though the lectures yet so apologies if you mention some later on.)

It is really the intro and first chapter of Marr's book that is still totally current. The rest of the book is brilliant but less representative of current thinking.

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#53

Post by nancykanwisher »

ghaff wrote: post #48
nancykanwisher wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you got it, more or less. Current views of how object recognition works in the brain are a lot like current deep net models of object recognition (e.g. Alexnet and beyond): a heirarchical series of processing steps in which units at successive processing stages get more selective for specific things, and more invariant to image variation (size, position, lighting, etc). One view of holistic face perceptio…

Interesting. In the past, I've read researchers commenting that "neural networks" was mostly unfortunate terminology because it implied the similarities between the physical patterns of the brain and connections between nodes in a neural network were a surface similarity that probably didn't offer insights into how the brain really worked. But you're saying that there may be more similarity than we thought. I remembe…

As the Marr intro chapter explains so beautifully, there are many levels of analysis in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. Units in deep nets are very different from actual neurons, and the backprop methods used to train deep nets have no resemblance to how human brains get wired up. But for the case of object recognition at the level of representation, there are striking similarities between deep nets optimized for invariant object recognition, and parts of the primate brain that carry out this task. See this brilliant and seminal paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8619.long

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#54

Post by ghaff »

nancykanwisher wrote: post #53
ghaff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In the past, I've read researchers commenting that "neural networks" was mostly unfortunate terminology because it implied the similarities between the physical patterns of the brain and connections between nodes in a neural network were a surface similarity that probably didn't offer insights into how the brain really worked. But you're saying that there may be more similarity than we thought. I remembe…

As the Marr intro chapter explains so beautifully, there are many levels of analysis in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. Units in deep nets are very different from actual neurons, and the backprop methods used to train deep nets have no resemblance to how human brains get wired up. But for the case of object recognition at the level of representation, there are striking similarities between deep nets opt…

Thanks! I look forward to diving into this.

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#55

Post by exikyut »

saamm wrote: post #32
richardboegli wrote: post #2

YouTube playlist of all linked videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGKBDfnk-iAQx4Kw9JeV...

Thank you for this! I used it to make a little script to download audio from each lecture: youtube-dl --get-id https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGKBDfnk-iAQx4Kw9JeVqspbg77sfAK0 -i > ids.txt while read id; do youtube-dl -f bestaudio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$id done

AFAIK, youtube-dl will find all videos and download them if fed a playlist URL. I'm curious if this script is a workaround for some obscure brokenness or something.

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#56

Post by [deleted] »

nancykanwisher wrote: post #41
akjetma wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to say thanks--I'm really enjoying these videos!

So glad to hear it, thank you. Do let me know if you encounter bits that are not clear or if you see ways the lectures could be improved. BTW the lectures were all originally 1 hour and 25 minutes - I just broke them into pieces because everyone tells me that is what web viewers like. Is that working for you guys, or would you prefer to watch a whole 1.5 hour lecture not broken into bits?

[deleted]

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#57

Post by compute_me »

This looks amazing! Added to my to-watch-list. Also, if you are interested in this kind of neuro- / cogsci- stuff with a tech-twist you might want to consider attending this wonderful spring school for an incredibly immersive learning experience: https://interdisciplinary-college.de/

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#58

Post by hybridtupel »

compute_me wrote: post #57

This looks amazing! Added to my to-watch-list. Also, if you are interested in this kind of neuro- / cogsci- stuff with a tech-twist you might want to consider attending this wonderful spring school for an incredibly immersive learning experience: https://interdisciplinary-college.de/

This looks nice, but one can only attend in person, am I right? Or are there any online materials available?

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#59

Post by manoj_venkat92 »

nancykanwisher wrote: post #53
ghaff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In the past, I've read researchers commenting that "neural networks" was mostly unfortunate terminology because it implied the similarities between the physical patterns of the brain and connections between nodes in a neural network were a surface similarity that probably didn't offer insights into how the brain really worked. But you're saying that there may be more similarity than we thought. I remembe…

As the Marr intro chapter explains so beautifully, there are many levels of analysis in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience. Units in deep nets are very different from actual neurons, and the backprop methods used to train deep nets have no resemblance to how human brains get wired up. But for the case of object recognition at the level of representation, there are striking similarities between deep nets opt…

I work with neural networks for complex scene processing and object detection on the roads. Best of part of my job is watching a network "learn/train itself" to classify various object categories.

Are there any good theories on what happens during the training process of the brain (for example, while learning a new skill or something very basic/simple) and how individual neurons get affected by this "learning" process? So, I understand from a psychological perspective, we see the brain as this beautiful system but I am asking from physiological perspective. What kind of changes can we observe in neurons when we learn something new?

P.S: Thanks a lot for your replies. Means a lot. :)

Re: MIT 9.11: The Human Brain (Spring 2018)

#60

Post by manoj_venkat92 »

nancykanwisher wrote: post #41
akjetma wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to say thanks--I'm really enjoying these videos!

So glad to hear it, thank you. Do let me know if you encounter bits that are not clear or if you see ways the lectures could be improved. BTW the lectures were all originally 1 hour and 25 minutes - I just broke them into pieces because everyone tells me that is what web viewers like. Is that working for you guys, or would you prefer to watch a whole 1.5 hour lecture not broken into bits?

Yes, the pieces are just perfect. Any good lecture series on major sites like Coursera have it that way. 1.5 hour lecture give me a good sleep.
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