As we say goodbye to summer and hello to fall, we find ourselves quite busy, and I’m happy to share several updates with you. First, we recently published a new manuscript to bioRxiv, titled “Untangling Sequences: Behavior vs. External Causes,” which looks at how the same neural mechanism can process two different types of sequences: sequences where sensory inputs change due to external factors, and sequences where inputs change due to our own behavior (sensorimotor sequences). You may recall that we have written about each type of sequence processing in “Why Neurons Have Thousands of Synapses, A Theory of Sequence Memory in Neocortex” and “Why Does the Neocortex Have Layers and Columns, A Theory of Learning the 3D Structure of the World,” respectively. This latest manuscript demonstrates how the same mechanism can do both, showing that our sensorimotor theory builds upon our sequence memory theory.
Speaking of sensorimotor theory, in our last newsletter I shared that we had submitted our first manuscript on this topic for peer review, “Why Does the Neocortex Have Layers and Columns…” I’m pleased to share that we received our first round of feedback and posted an updated version to bioRxiv. We’ve also created additional resources for those who want to learn more about this research. For a high level overview, we have a short video and some recent blog posts (here and here) that relate our theory to common occurrences. For a slightly deeper level of detail, we have a page on our site dedicated to this research, with FAQs, key takeaways and more. For those who want to go even deeper by replicating our simulations or looking at our code, we have created a new repository where you can access the source code and data for all scripts. While the repository currently contains this single manuscript, we plan to add code and data for all of our research papers. For more on why we decided to do this, read here.
I’m also pleased to share that we have several events planned for this fall. Later this month, our Open Source Community Manager Matt Taylor will be giving a talk at Strange Loop in St. Louis, MO. On Nov 3, we will be at ODSC West in San Francisco, CA, where Matt will speak in the afternoon, followed by a HTM Meetup that evening. We’re still putting the meetup agenda together, so if you have something you’d like to present, contact us.
In Partner news, Francisco Webber, co-founder of Cortical.io, will be speaking at three Big Data events in three different countries over the coming month. He will give a talk in Washington DC, Toronto, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland titled “Simplifying AI: One Algorithm, One Operator, One Data Format.” Cortical.io also released a new video, “Semantic Folding: a new model for intelligent text processing.” This short walkthrough does a nice job of explaining how Cortical.io technology mimics the way the brain processes information.
Grok is having a busy fall as well. They were recently named the Fastest Growing DevOps Solution 2017 in Insights Success Magazine. The company also received a 2017 TIMMY award when it won the “Tech in Motion Orange County Startup of the Year” competition. Grok continues to grow, as they recently welcomed Josh Kindiger as President, and are actively looking to hire several positions, including data engineer, front end developer and backend developer. You can learn more about the current openings here.
Thank you for your continued interest in Numenta. We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message, tag us on social media, or join a discussion on the HTM Forum.
Christy Maver • VP of Marketing