DM's Itinerary

Here are some of the places I passed along the way.

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  Servos in the spinal cord

  In this lecture I explain how the spinal cord implements a closed loop controller for each muscle.

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  Mathematical Universe Hypothesis

  Something a bit different ...

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  Evolutionary Algorithms Literature Review

  I review the literature and state of the art of genetic and evolutionary algorithms.

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  Short Term Synaptic Plasticity

  In this lecture I discuss short term synaptic plasticity.
  What is it? And what is its purpose?

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  The Brainstem & The Cerebellum: Basic Operating Principles

  In this lecture I explain the basic operating principles of the brainstem and the cerebellum. If you prefer to read, the next post is a short article covering this same material.

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  How The Cerebellum Contributes to Behavior

  This article reviews the prerequisite knowledge of control systems and then explains the purpose and function of the cerebellum.

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  The Representation of Information in the Brain

  In this lecture I explain how the cortex represents information.

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  Introduction to Computational Neuroscience

  In this lecture I introduce the topic of computational neuroscience and then I briefly review the biology and chemistry of the brain.

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  NMODL Preprocessor

  This program optimizes NMODL files for the NEURON simulator. I wanted to see how much performance was being left on the table: between 5%-15%.

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  Play with the NEURON Simulator

  This script sets up the NEURON simulator with a realistic model of action potential propagation. The pyramidal neuron was scanned from layer 5 of a cat's visual cortex.

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  Kropff & Treves 2008, for Numenta and the HTM Forum

  Lecture about the (Kropff & Treves, 2008) theory of Grid Cells.
  This reframes their work in terms of Numenta's HTM theory.

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  Run Away Synapses

  An in-depth analysis of a flaw that I found and fixed in the HTM algorithm.

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  Prototype of Stability Mechanism for Viewpoint Invariance

  In this report I demonstrate an unsupervised learning algorithm for recognizing objects and their boundaries. This is a biologically constrained extension of the HTM theory.

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  Kropff & Treves 2008, Reproduction Study

  In this report I reproduce a computational model of "grid cells," which are a type of neuron that tracks an animal's physical location.

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  HTM Stability

  In this report I discuss viewpoint invariance for HTM systems. I introduce the concept of stability, quantify it, and demonstrate a rudimentary method of achieving it.

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  Spatial Pooler Implementation for MNIST Dataset

  In this report I reproduce the Spatial Pooler algorithm and experiment with logarithmic boosting and local inhibition. This was my first post on the HTM Forum.

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  Science in the 21^st Century

  Under the right conditions, science and technology can accelerate its own development.

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  Global Illumination

  I took several computer graphics courses in college and I enjoyed them a lot.

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  Graph Algorithms in Python

  This is a python library of graph algorithms that I published in college. Graphs are a mathematical concept and at the time I was quite interested in studying their properties and applications. This library's distinguishing feature is that it operates directly on the user's data structures, whereas all comparable libraries required the user to copy their data into and out of a specific data structure or format. My library accomplishes this using an "adjacency()" function to specify the graph structure. I'm proud of how simple and versatile this API is.

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  Wright Flyer Animation

  I rendered this animation for a college course, in which I learned that 3D modeling is a difficult skill that I don't have.

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  A funny thing happened on the way to the other side

  Anecdotes from a youth spent wandering the roads at night