#84 Causality in Neuroscience & Psychology, with Konrad Kording

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This is another installment in our neuroscience modeling series! This time, I talked with Konrad Kording, about the role of Bayesian stats in neuroscience and psychology, electrophysiological data to study what neurons do, and how this helps explain human behavior.

Konrad studied at ETH Zurich, then went to UC London and MIT for his postdocs. After a decade at Northwestern University, he is now Penn Integrated Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

As you’ll hear, Konrad is particularly interested in the question of how the brain solves the credit assignment problem and similarly how we should assign credit in the real world (through causality). Building on this, he is also interested in applications of causality in biomedical research.

And… he’s also a big hiker, skier and salsa dancer!

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, William Benton, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor,, Chad Scherrer, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Raul Maldonado, Marcin Elantkowski, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen, Andreas Netti, Riley King, Yoshiyuki Hamajima, Sven De Maeyer, Michael DeCrescenzo, Fergal M, Mason Yahr, Naoya Kanai, Steven Rowland, Aubrey Clayton, Jeannine Sue, Omri Har Shemesh, Scott Anthony Robson, Robert Yolken, Or Duek, Pavel Dusek, Paul Cox, Trey Causey, Andreas Kröpelin, Raphaël R, Nicolas Rode, Gabriel Stechschulte, Arkady, Kurt TeKolste, Gergely Juhasz, Marcus Nölke, Maggi Mackintosh, Grant Pezzolesi, Avram Aelony and Joshua Meehl.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

• Konrad’s lab: https://kordinglab.com/
• Konrad’s lab on GitHub: https://github.com/KordingLab
• Konrad’s lab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KordingLab
• LBS #81, Neuroscience of Perception: Exploring the Brain, with Alan Stocker: https://learnbayesstats.com/episode/81-neuroscience-of-perception-exploring-the-brain-alan-stocker/
• LBS #77, How a Simple Dress Helped Uncover Hidden Prejudices, with Pascal Wallisch: https://learnbayesstats.com/episode/77-how-a-simple-dress-helped-uncover-hidden-prejudices-pascal-wallisch/
• The Sports Gene, Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance: https://davidepstein.com/david-epstein-the-sports-gene/
• Decoding with good ML: https://github.com/KordingLab/Neural_Decoding and https://www.eneuro.org/content/7/4/ENEURO.0506-19.2020
• Bayesian decoding: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5578432/
• Textbook on Bayesian modeling of behavior: bayesianmodeling.com
• Bayesian philosophy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3981868/
• Konrad talking about Neuromatch Bayes day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neDaPap_5Tg
• The Neuromatch Bayes tutorials: compneuro.neuromatch.io

Transcript

Please note that this is an automatic transcript and may contain errors. Feel free to reach out if you would like to correct them.