Theme for Fall, 2009: Developmental Vision
The topics lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence, brain science, and cognitive
science, with an emphasis on vision, but not limited to vision. The course was designed to
suit graduate students in engineering as well as computationally oriented graduate students in
neuroscience, cognitive science, and mathematics.
Theories of epigenesis; brain architectures; mental architectures; developmental mechanisms
for functions and integration; dorsal and ventral pathways; biological basis of short-term,
long-term, working, episodic memories; autonomy in learning; pathways for vision, audition,
touch and motor behaviors; bottom-up and top-down attention; incremental learning; scaffolding;
skill transfer; motivational systems; and autonomous reasoning. The subject matter cuts across
levels of cells, circuits, cortices, brain, experience and functions, and is intended for
high-dimensional natural stimuli.
Instructor: Juyang (John) Weng
Class: 5:00pm - 6:20pm, Mondays and Wednesdays, room 3400 Engineering
Building.
Text: Working manuscript: Juyang Weng, Developmental Robotics
Syllabus
General philosophy: Autonomous Mental Development by Robots and Animals
Course text
Lecture notes
Weekly papers
To Weng's Home Page: http://web.cse.msu.edu/~weng/