11–26 Nov 2021
Europe/Budapest timezone

Representation and control: linear or nonlinear dimensionality reduction?

Not scheduled
20m
Online lecture

Speaker

Prof. Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi Mussa-Ivaldi (Northwestern University)

Description

Divide et impera – divide and rule – is an ancient political strategy broadly applicable to complex problems. Theoretical considerations and experimental evidence suggest that this is how the nervous system generates full repertoires of actions by the combination of pre-defined actions or policies. In the framework of geometry, the linear combination of basis vectors spans a vector space. There is empirical evidence that this geometrical view may be consistent with the way the neuromuscular system generates and combines mechanical forces. A similar view has been proposed to represent the kinematics of hand actions through the linear combination of few principal components. I will discuss some recent findings that cast doubts on the latter linear approach suggesting that the kinematics of gestures and hand actions have latent manifolds with significant nonlinear structure. The use of nonlinear methods for dimensionality reduction is however a mixed blessing: as one may gain higher fidelity in movement representation, abandoning linearity comes at the cost of greater complexity in control. I will discuss how the use of cartographic techniques may shed light on this tradeoff.

Primary author

Prof. Sandro Mussa-Ivaldi Mussa-Ivaldi (Northwestern University)

Presentation materials

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