Welcome to the LAB (which stands for LAB for the Algorithmic Brain), led by Xaq Pitkow. We’re located at Carnegie Mellon University, in the Neuroscience Institute and with affiliation to the Department of Machine Learning in the School of Computer Science. We aim to understand how the brain works using mathematical principles. We develop theories of neural computation and collaborate with experimentalists to test these predictions.

We can explain many features of neural processing with a few simple ideas:

• the brain looks for change
• the brain is deeply nonlinear
• the brain weighs uncertainty
• the brain distributes information across many neurons

Making these ideas precise and applying them to specific tasks requires tools from machine learning, statistics, physics, and applied mathematics. Take a look at our current Publications, Projects, and Principles to see how.

The lab gratefully acknowledges generous support for our work from: