OxTalks is Changing
OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Prefrontal cortex as a meta-reinforcement learning system
Over the past twenty years, neuroscience research on reward-based learning has converged on a canonical model, under which the neurotransmitter dopamine ‘stamps in’ associations between situations, actions and rewards by modulating the strength of synaptic connections between neurons. However, a growing number of recent findings have placed this standard model under strain. In the present work, we draw on recent advances in artificial intelligence to introduce a new theory of reward-based learning. Here, the dopamine system trains another part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, to operate as its own free-standing learning system. This new perspective accommodates the findings that motivated the standard model, but also deals gracefully with a wider range of observations, providing a fresh foundation for future research.
Date:
29 November 2017, 13:30
Venue:
Le Gros Clark Building, off South Parks Road OX1 3QX
Venue Details:
Lecture theatre
Speaker:
Dr Matthew Botvinick (DeepMind and Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL)
Organisers:
Dr Friedemann Zenke (University of Oxford),
Dr Rafal Bogacz (University of Oxford),
Dr Tim Vogels
Organiser contact email address:
friedemann.zenke@cncb.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Oxford NeuroAI Forum
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Friedemann Zenke
