Entropy Best Presentation Award at CNS*2019 Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience

We are pleased to announce the winner of the best presentation award that Entropy sponsored at the CNS*2019 Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience in Barcelona, Spain, on 16–17 July 2019.

“Adaptability and Efficiency in Neural Coding” by Wiktor Mlynarski and Ann Hermundstad

The ability to dynamically adapt to changes in the environment is one of the defining features of sensory systems. In this work, together with my collaborator Ann Hermundstad of Janelia Research Campus, we developed a normative framework to analyze information processing in adaptive sensory systems. We showed that sensory codes optimized for performing task-relevant computations can be different from codes optimized for adapting to changes in the stimulus distributions that underlie these computations. These differences manifest in the speed of adaptation, the accuracy of the code during periods of adaptation, and the accuracy in the adapted state. Our results provide a unifying perspective on adaptation across a range of sensory systems, environments, and sensory tasks.