Photograph of Konrad Kording

Konrad Kording, PhD

  • Research Scientist, SMPP, RIC

Locations

Research Interests

Konrad Kording, PhD is currently researching various topics. Research in his laboratory uses ideas from economics to address problems of relevance to neuroscience and rehabilitation. In economics it is often assumed that agents in the market make efficient decisions. Similarly we may assume that the nervous system efficiently solves the problems that it encounters during everyday life, after all we may argue that the purpose of our nervous system is to allow us to thrive in our environment. Bayesian decision theory is the systematic way of calculating how the nervous system may make good decisions in the presence of uncertainty. We live in an uncertain world and each decision may have many possible outcomes and choosing the best decision is thus complicated. Our laboratory builds new algorithms to deal with uncertainty and analyzes how people deal with uncertainty. We use theory as well as computational and neural modeling to understand how information is processed in the nervous system, explaining data obtained in collaboration with electrophysiologists and in psychophysical experiments. One of the central objectives of our laboratory is to improve rehabilitation through better understanding of the economical principles underlying human movement.

Recent Publications & Presentations

Körding, KP, Beierholm, U, Ma, W, Quartz, S, Tenenbaum, J, Shams, L Causal Inference in Cue Combination, PLOSOne 2(9): e943. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000943.

Körding, KP, Tenenbaum JB, and Shadmehr R The dynamics of memory as a consequence of optimal adaptation to a changing body, Nature Neuroscience, 10:779-786.

Körding, KP, Tenenbaum, JB and Shadmehr, R The dynamics of memory as a consequence of optimal adaptation to a changing body, Nature Neuroscience, Published online: doi:10.1038/nn1901.

Körding, KP, Tenenbaum, JB and Shadmehr, R . The dynamics of memory are the consequence of optimal adaptation to a changing body (2007), Nat Neurosci 10, 779.

Körding, KP, Tenenbaum, JB and Shadmehr, R Multiple timescales and uncertainty in motor adaptation. (in press, 2006). Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 19.

Körding, KP and Tenenbaum, JB Causal inference in sensorimotor integration. (in press, 2006). Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 19.

Körding, KP and Wolpert, D. (2006) Bayesian decision theory in sensorimotor control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (TICS) 10(7) 320-326.

Körding, KP, Ku, SP and Wolpert, D (2004) Bayesian Integration in force estimation J Neurophysiol 92(5):3161-5.

Körding, KP, Fukunaga, I, Howard, IS, Ingram, J and Wolpert, D (2004) A neuroeconomics approach to measuring human loss functions, PLOS Biology.

Körding, KP and Wolpert, D (2004) The loss function of sensorimotor learning, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101:9839-42.

Körding, KP and Wolpert, D (2004) Bayesian Integration in Sensorimotor Learning, Nature 427:244-247.

Körding, KP, Kayser, C, Einhäuser, W and König, P How are complex cell properties adapted to the statistics of natural scenes? Journal of Neurophysiology 91(1):206-212.

Research Studies

Education & Training

Education

ETH Zurich,
Ph.D. Thesis, "Optimization and Learning: from microscopic , 2001
ETH Zurich,
Diploma-thesis, "On the purpose of a backpropagating acti , 1997

Fellowships

MIT, Cambridge, MA
Heisenberg fellow working on the application of ideas from cognitive science , 2006
MIT, Cambridge, MA
Postdoctoral fellow learning state of the art machine learning, hierarchical , 2005
UCL London
Postdoctoral fellow addressing learning and optimality in the motor system , 2004
Collegium Helveticum, Helveticum
Postdoctoral fellow studying philosophy and philosophy of science and the s , 2002

Curriculum Vitae

View curriculum vitae online.

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