CSE Speaker Series – Dr. Giri Krishnan

Giri Krishnan will give a talk on “Learning During Sleep,” as part of the Computer Science and Engineering Department Speaker Series. 11 a.m. 9/28/2017, in Cramer 221.

Abstract:
Recent work in psychology and neuroscience have identified that people and animals continue to learn during sleep and lack of sleep impairs consolidation of memories. There is evidence that during sleep memories (formed while awake) are being replayed, (improperly) which results in strengthening some memories, weakening or modifying others. The rules for how memories are modified and replayed during sleep is not known. So, exactly what is being learned in sleep is to be studied.In this talk, we present a theoretical framework that would enable us to predict the changes to learned memories during sleep. We will demonstrate that the replay activity during sleep is determined by an energy function that can be predicted from a simplified neural network model using markov chain methods (called the reduced firing rate model).