Spring Semester 2012
Computation in Neural Systems:
Biological and Computational Vision
Thursdays 17.15 h to 19.00
h
(See plan here)
The course starts on
Thursday, February 23, 2011
Organizers: Daniel
Kiper, Prof. K.A.C.
Martin
Teaching Assistent To be announced
This
interdisciplinary
course
is
open
to
all
students
of
the
University
of
Zurich
and
of
the
ETH
Zurich.
Typically,
our
students
come
from
Biology,
Physics,
Mathematics,
Computer
Science,
and
Psychology.
Whether
you
intend
to
take
the
course
for
credit
or
to
just
sit
in
it,
you
do
not
have
to
ask
permission,
everybody
is
welcome.
Materials.
The topics covered in each
lecture are summarized
in the slides used for each lecture, which are available on this
website (in pdf format).
The
main
material
for
the
course
is
therefore
your
own
notes,
taken
during
the
lectures.
For
some
lectures,
we
have
additional
text,
which
is
also
distributed
in
class.
People
who
would
like
to
know
more
about
vision
may
want
to
look
at
a
book:
Wandell,
B. (1995)
Foundations
of Vision. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer. Here you can see a few relevant chapters. For copyright reasons,
the chapters are in a zip, password protected file. I can communicate
you the password during class.
Assistance.
If
you
do
not
understand
something,
fix
an
appointment
with
the
appropriate
lecturer.
If
you
miss
a
lecture,
download
the
handout
and
ask
a
friend
to
explain
to
you
what
is
going
on.
Exercises.
The exercises
will be explained as the semester progresses. Their nature ranges from
online experiments to readings of papers.
You have to submit most exercises to me and Janie by email. You need to
have made a reasonable attempt to solve at least 75% of exercises
throughout the semester to receive the testat.
Final exam
information:
The final exam is a 20 min oral examination on
the material covered during the lectures and the exercises.
Language:
The
course's
official language is English, but you are free to ask questions in
German. You can also speak German during the exam if you prefer.
Current Syllabus
These are the main themes,
they will be expanded as we go along...keep checking the page regularly.
Feb. 23: Introduction and organizational issues (D. Kiper). Here are
the slides.
March 1: End of introduction, Noise in the visual system. Here are the slides. Here are the first exercises.
And here is the answer sheet.
March 8: Noise in the visual system (continued). Here are the new slides. Here are the exercises.
March 15: We will finish with retinal processing and computation in
noise, and start discussing V1 and coding/decoding issues. Here are the
next slides.
The next exercise is to read the following chapter (deadline, March
29, i.e. not this week, but next)
You do not have to answer questions yet, but the material might be part
of the final exam.
March 22: V1 and coding/decoding continued.
March 29: V1 coding/decoding continued. Here is the new exercise sheet, due April 18.
April 5: Easter, no class
April 12: Easter, no class
April 19: End of V1, coding and decoding. Here are the exercises due on April 25. We have not
discussed everything in thos eexercises, you may have to research a bit
for the answers...
Here is the review on coding/decoding by Pouget
et al.
April 26: Receptive Field Models. Here are the slides.
Here are the exercises due on May 2, 2012.
May 3: Motion perception and area MT. Here are the slides.
Here are the exercises due May 9, 2012.
May 10:
May 17: Ascension, no class
May 24:
May 31: