MindCORE/CNI Seminar: William Bialek

William Bialek
Princeton Neuroscience Institute


Optimization principles, revisited

On a dark night, our visual system can count single photons, a sound we can barely hear vibrates the eardrum by the diameter of an atom, and the resolution of many eyes is set by diffraction. In these and other examples, the brain and mind reach a level of performance close to the limits set by the laws of physics. Many have suggested that this notion of (near-)optimal performance should be promoted to a principle from which crucial aspects of behavior and mechanism can be derived. Others have argued that this is nonsense, emphasizing the messiness of brains and other biological systems. I’ll present new developments: the implementation of optimization principles in more realistic contexts, leading to much richer predictions, and the perhaps surprising demonstration that, for many problems, optimal performance does not require fine tuning of the underlying parameters. These arguments can be technical, but I think have broad implications for our conception of living systems in general, and brains in particular.


A pizza lunch will be served. Please bring your own beverage.