New approaches for studying cortical representations

All rights reserved. We review two new approaches for studying cortical representations of sensory stimuli. These exploit optimization algorithms and auto-encoders from machine learning and high resolution electrophysiology data. We show how these approaches can shed new light into the information processing and maintenance taking place in neuronal populations. These approaches allow us to study: 1. Changes in the precision of error representations as a result of neuromodulation. 2. Differences in the cortical connectivity underlying memory representations for different stimuli