Transparent lazy data access for matlab

11th January, 2011

By default, Matlab matrices must be fully loaded into memory. This can make allocating and working with huge matrices a pain, especially if you only really need access to a small portion of the matrix at a time. memmapfile allows the data for a matrix to be stored on disk, but you can't access the matrix transparently in functions that don't expect a memmapfile object without reading in the whole matrix. MappedTensor is a matlab class that looks like a simple matlab tensor, with all the data stored on disk.

Poster: Common rules for anatomy and function in cortex

Presented at the ETH D-BIOL symposium 2010

17th June, 2010

The poster summarised work on comparing the spatial arrangement of patches and of function in macaque monkey primary visual cortex (area V1).

Workshops at Capo Caccia 2010

Transient synchrony and competition

1st April, 2010

We spent a fascinating two weeks at Capo Caccia discussing winner-take-all competition in relation to cortical anatomy, and began a collaboration examining transient sycnhrony in cortical networks.

Fast Alpha Hulls in matlab

Parallelised for your enjoyment

18th November, 2009

Alpha hulls (wikipedia) are a convenient method for extracting the boundary shape of a set of points. The technique allows you to specify a distance (alpha) over which the surface should be convex. Different spatial scales can be examined in this way. RIP Benoît.

Structure and function of the superficial patch system

30th October, 2009

Injections of neural tracers into the superficial layers of cortex reveal a remarkable element of the cortical architecture. Labelled neurons spread their axons widely within a single cortical area — but instead of the uniform diffusion of projections across the cortical surface that one might expect, many thousands of labelled neurons collaborate to form regions of more and less dense innervation.