This workshop addresses the central question in Computational Neuroscience  which aspects of neural firing patterns matter functionally and which may be of less importance. In the past, various heuristic measures have been used to characterise spike train data such as firing rates, interspike intervals, pair-correlations, and so on. More recently, advanced tools have been proposed that more systematically explore coding properties of neurons and neural ensembles. These comprise, for example, higher-order statistics, information-based interaction and complexity measures, spike-train metrics, or detailed computational models which allow to understand and predict spike-timing in neurons faithfully.

The workshop aims at reviewing some of these recent advances, especially progress on spike train metrics and complementary measures to characterize and predict neural firing patterns. Experimental studies, modelling, data-analysis, and theoretical contributions are equally welcome. Possible topics comprise but are not restricted to

• progress on single and multiple-unit spike train metrics
• information-theoretic approaches addressing spike patterns
• statistical characterisation of multiple unit firing patterns
• heuristic measures to characterise neural coding properties
• fitting of computational models from spike trains
• spike train prediction
• applications in data analysis and neural coding

The workshop will consist of invited talks, discussions, and a poster session.

Invited Speakers (70% confirmed)

Matthias Bethge (MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany)

Christian Borgelt (European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain)

Bruno Cessac (Institute Non Lineare, Nice, France)

Wulfram Gerstner (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland)

Peter Latham (UCL, UK)

Marcello Montemurro (University of Manchester, UK)

Rodrigo Quian-Quiroga (University of Leicester, UK)

Stefan Rotter (University of Freiburg, Germany)

Simon Schultz (Imperial College, UK)

Jonathan Victor (Weill Cornell Medical College, NY, USA)

Participation is free, but registration *is* required.

Limited travel funds for students will be available.

For further information regarding registration, location, travel information,  please visit the workshop webpage at http://helen.pion.ac.uk/stm2010

Organisers:

Thomas Wennekers (University of Plymouth, UK)

Sonja Gruen (RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan)

Roman Borisyuk (University of Plymouth, UK)

Leslie Smith (University of Stirling, UK)

This workshop is generously funded by the UK Spike Train Network and the UK INCF Neuroinformatics Node.