2024 GAC 2

Attending to errors in predictive coding:  a collaborative community experiment through the OpenScope program


Jerome Lecoq, Allen Institute

Michael Berry, Princeton University

Colleen Gillon, Imperial College London

Konrad Kording, University of Pennsylvania


Short description

Predictive coding stands as a leading theory of cortical function, holding significant implications for our understanding of perception, cognition, learning, and overall brain function. Multiple hypotheses have vied to explain how the cortex performs predictive coding. Central to all these proposed explanations is the following question: What mechanism(s) underlie the subtraction of predictions from input sensory data? While many answers to this question have been proposed, two competing hypotheses have come to the forefront: a cellular hypothesis and a dendritic hypothesis. Our workshop unites experimentalists and theorists with complementary and conflicting results and hypotheses to collaboratively design a neuroscience experiment addressing this question. Our proposal is strengthened by collaboration with the Allen Institute’s OpenScope Program, an NIH-funded brain observatory ready to perform the proposed experiment on the Allen Institute’s pipelines—without the need to wait for a grant application cycle (http://openscope.ai). Datasets stemming from this endeavor will be made openly accessible to the entire scientific community for analysis.

Instructions for CCN community members: