BICS’2004

 

Workshop

Information coding in early sensory stages

 

August 29 – September 1, 2004

University of Stirling, Scotland, UK

 

 

Objective

 

To discuss how information is coded in early sensory stages, emphasizing the differences as well as similarities among the sensory systems.

 

Motivation

 

Information Coding in early sensory stages deals with the general problem concerning with how the brain transforms the external signals into internal representations. The understanding of such codes would have a tremendous impact not only to discover the mechanisms underlying the processing of sensory information, but also to predict the processing requirements imposed to subsequent processing stages. Currently, there are several open issues deserving the attention of the research community:

 

o       Which type of coding (compact, redundant, etc.) is performed in early sensory stages?

o       What is the relationship between single and population neural codes?

o       Which stimulus aspects are encoded through firing rate? Which ones through bursting discharge?

o       How membrane and synaptic mechanisms participate in neural coding?

o       Is synchronization fundamental for information coding?

o       How spatiotemporal codes can contribute to understand the neural activity?

 

Topics

 

The workshop welcomes both experimental and computational work, emphasizing multidisciplinary papers, in order to present new experimental evidences and discuss the proposed theoretical frameworks. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

 

o       Models and experimental results in early stages of sensory systems

o       Synchronization mechanisms underlying neural coding

o       Population coding

o       Redundant versus compact codes

o       Specificity versus generality of neural codes among sensory systems

o       Spatiotemporal coding

 

Paper submission

 

Papers should be no more than 7 pages including all references and figures. Please use the BICS formatting instructions regarding full paper submission available at http://www.icsc-naiso.org/conferences/bics2004/manuscripts.html. Manuscripts must be submitted in either PDF or DOC format.  All papers must be original, and have not been published or submitted elsewhere.

Accepted papers will be published in the CDROM conference proceedings. In addition, authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper for publication in a special issue of the Neurocomputing Journal, published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Note: Participants are expected to register for the main BICS conference in addition to the workshop.

 

Submissions must be sent either to carolina.varela-rodriguez@st-antoine.inserm.fr or to eduardos@usc.es.

 

Important Dates

 

o       April 30, 2004: Deadline for electronic submission

 

o       May 20, 2004: Notification of acceptance or rejection

o

o       August 29-September 1, 2004: BICS-04 Workshop

 

Workshop co-chairs

 

o       Carolina Varela Rodríguez.

Laboratory of Physiopathology Cellular and Mollecular of the Retina  (U-592) 

184 rue du Faubourg St-Antoine
Hôpital Saint Antoine, Bat Kourilsky
75571 Paris Cedex12

E-mail: carolina.varela-rodriguez@st-antoine.inserm.fr.

o       Eduardo M. Sánchez Vila.

Department of Electronics and Computer Science. School of Physics. University of Santiago de Compostela.

15782 Santiago de Compostela.

E-mail: eduardos@usc.es.