Course website: http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/courses/syde-750.html
Fall 2026 — classes run Sep 9 to Dec 8. Tuesdays 12:00–1:50 and Thursdays 12:00–12:50, in E5 2004. There are no classes during reading week (Oct 13 and Oct 15).
Slides and notes will be linked here as the term progresses.
- Sep 10 - Administrative Remarks [Slides] [Notes]
- Sep 10 - Introduction [Slides] [Notes]
- Sep 15 - Neurons [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Sep 17, 22 - Population Representation [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Sep 24, 29 - Temporal Representation [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Oct 1, 6 - Feedforward Transformations [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Oct 8 - Nengo Tutorial [Install Nengo]
- Oct 20, 22 - Recurrent Dynamics [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Oct 27 - Temporal Basis Functions [[Slides]] [[Notes]] [[LMU Overview]]
- Oct 29, Nov 3, 5 - Learning [[Slides]] [[Notes]] [[Neuromorphics Bonus]] [[Adaptive Control Example]] (project proposal due Oct 29)
- Nov 10 - Analysing Representation [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Nov 12, 17 - Symbols [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Nov 19, 24 - Semantic Pointer Architecture [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Nov 26, Dec 1 - Spatial Semantic Pointers [[Slides]] [[Notes]]
- Dec 3 - Conclusion [[Slides]]
- Dec 8 - Project Presentations
- Dec 18 - Projects due (midnight ET)
There are no graded programming assignments in this course. Instead, six ungraded practice notebooks (PN1–PN6) will be posted here over the term.
- Each notebook covers the material for the test that follows it, and one or two questions on each test come directly from the matching notebook.
- No solutions are released. Instead, each part ends with a qualitative expected-result checkpoint so you can verify your work yourself.
- You are expected to work through the notebooks individually.
The notebooks require nengo, nengo_spa, numpy, matplotlib, and
scipy. PN1 and PN2 are pure numpy, so you hand-code decoders yourself;
PN3 onward uses Nengo.
- PN1 - Neurons and Population Representation [Notebook]
- PN2 - Temporal Representation and Transformations [[Notebook]]
- PN3 - Nengo and Simple Dynamics [[Notebook]]
- PN4 - Decision Making, Learning, and the LMU [[Notebook]]
- PN5 - Symbols and the Semantic Pointer Architecture [[Notebook]]
- PN6 - Spatial Semantic Pointers [[Notebook]]
There are six closed-book tests, written in class during the last 30 minutes of a Thursday lecture, roughly every two weeks. The lowest of the six marks is dropped.
| Notebook | Posted | Test | Test date |
|---|---|---|---|
| PN1 | Sep 10 | T1 | Sep 24 |
| PN2 | Sep 22 | T2 | Oct 8 |
| PN3 | Oct 6 | T3 | Oct 29 |
| PN4 | Oct 27 | T4 | Nov 12 |
| PN5 | Nov 10 | T5 | Nov 26 |
| PN6 | Nov 24 | T6 | Dec 3 |