EECS 294-4 Fall 1997
Connectionist and Neural Computation
Jerome Feldman and Lokendra Shastri

Schedule of Lectures

Aug 26

General Introduction: historical perspective; several origins, examples from CogSci. Notes (JAF)

Aug 28

Neural basis: brain, systems, circuits, synapses Notes (JAF)

Sep 02

Abstract computational models - binary threshold units, perceptrons, sigmoid units, units with state. Perceptron learning theorem, etc. Notes (LS)

Sep 04

Learning algorithms for multi-layer nets with differentiable nodes (aka backprop) Notes (LS)

Problem-1 due

Sep 09

Backpropagation in practice: some practical considerations - effective use of data, over-fitting and generalization. Catastrophic interference. Modular approaches. Notes (LS)

Sep 11

Principal Components, Function Approximation, Radial Basis Functions. Technical and Math review of Ballard Chapters 1-6. Notes (JAF)

Problem-2 due

Sep 16

Recurrent nets: Jordan, Elman, BP through time. Notes (JAF)

Sep 18

Temporal Flow Model, Competitive learning, Kohonen nets Notes (LS)

Problem-3 due

Sep 23

Taking stock: requirements of cognitive tasks and neural net techniques, structured connectionist approach. Notes (JAF)

Sep 25

Structured connectionist models - Regier's model of learning spatial relations. Notes (JAF)

Problem-4 due

Sep 30

Structured connectionist models - SHRUTI - a model of reflexive reasoning Notes (LS)

Oct 02

Implications of temporal synchrony variable binding Notes (LS)

Problem-5 due

Oct 07

X-Schemas Notes (JAF)

Project proposals due

Oct 09

Reinforcement learning Notes (JAF)

Problem-6 due

Oct 14

One-shot or recruitment learning (LS)

Oct 16

Structured connectionist models-4 (LS)

Problem-7 due

Oct 21

Connectionist models of vision and motion (JAF) Notes (JAF)

Oct 23

Incremental learning and model merging Notes (JAF)

Oct 28

Energy and Harmony - Hopfield Nets, Boltzmann Machine, and Harmony Theory. Notes (LS)

Oct 30

More on connectionist models of vision. Notes (JAF)

Nov 04

Harmony Theory, Comparing different solutions proposed for the binding problem (temporal synchrony, tensor-products, and signatures). Notes (LS)

Nov 06

Guest Lecture: Bayes Networks, and Petri Nets (Srini Narayanan)

Nov 11

Guest Lecture (John Lazzaro) References

Nov 13

Neural Development Notes (JAF)

Nov 18

Applications - speech (Morgan)

Nov 20

NN and statistics. (Breiman) Notes

Nov 25

Project descriptions (students)

Dec 02

Project descriptions (students)

Dec 04

Project descriptions (students)

• About this document ...