nuSPIC Home

Announcements

Nov. 14, 2011
» nuSPIC at the SFN 2011 meeting

nuSPIC will be present at the SFN 2011 meeting, Washington D.C. Please come over to booth 3329 for a live demonstration.

Oct. 4, 2011
» First public presentation

nuSPIC is presented for the first time in public during the Bernstein Conference 2011 (BC11) held in Freiburg, Germany

Oct. 1, 2011
» nuSPIC is now online

nuSPIC is now online

Aug. 17, 2011
» nuSPICs temporally available.

nuSPICs temporally available for Biologie and IMTEK

Aug. 3, 2011
» First BCF internal nuSPIC beta test!

location: ilab start: 17.00 end: 19.00

News archive

Neural System Prediction and Identification Challenge

nuSPIC is designed to test two major assumptions in contemporary neuroscience:

that we can extract the function(s) performed by a biological neural network provided complete knowledge of network structure and neural activity
that we can build models of brain function based on the observed neural activity

However, there is no clear evidence so far that these assumptions are in fact valid. Here we invite you to examine them using simple spiking neuron networks.

The awards

We will award prizes to those users who successfully extract the "hardwired" function each network was designed for. Additionally, we will consider solutions that propose functions performed by the networks beyond those explicitly built-in. The awards will be given in a first-solved-first-served basis. Recommended steps:

'Play' around with the networks until you have come up with some reasonable hypothesis about the function that the network may be encoding.
Test your hypothesis for different inputs. Remember, a function should be valid for a broad range of inputs.
Write down short comments about the logical steps that you are performing in the corresponding box.
Once you are sure about the function that you have identified send us an email to sudo.nuspic@gmail.com

At the moment we have three open challenges: Cajal, Hebb and Marr. Each of these will be awarded a brand new Apple iPod nano 8 GB. For those users who have come close enough to the solution, but are not quite there yet, we will hand out cool nuSPIC T-shirts.

Note: Users can use the forum to discuss problems, exchange ideas etc. However, keep in mind, that the forum is visible to all registered users.

» Take the challenge