Simons Foundation workshop on canonical cortical computations

• The Simons Foundation is accepting applications for a workshop on canonical cortical computations.¹
• The workshop provides computational neuroscience context for neural coding and potential BCI theory.^{1 1}

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

• The workshop is organized by the Center for Computational Neuroscience (CCN) at the Flatiron Institute together with the Simons Foundation Neuroscience Collaborations, aiming to seed a large-scale collaborative project on the circuit-level mechanisms of canonical cortical computations.²³
• It was scheduled for April 27–28, 2026, at the Simons Foundation’s offices in New York City (listed as the “CCNx Workshop on Canonical Cortical Computations”).²³
• Approximately 30 attendees were to be selected, drawn especially from experimentalists working in rodent and/or nonhuman-primate models, with theoretical and computational neuroscientists also invited.²
• The application called for a biosketch and a one-page statement of expertise; the deadline was extended to January 12, 2026 (5 p.m. ET), with selection notifications planned by February 27, 2026 (application period now closed).²⁴
• The stated motivation is that advances in anatomy, connectomics, biophysics, developmental biology, and theory now make it feasible to build and test models that faithfully capture canonical cortical circuit function through vertically integrated theory–experiment partnerships.²
• Participation was explicitly framed as not guaranteeing inclusion in the eventual collaborative project or future funding.²
• For BCI/neural-coding relevance, canonical cortical computation research typically centers on two operations reviewed in the literature: a feedforward computation of stimulus selectivity and a recurrent computation of gain (an inhibition-stabilized network that largely cancels strong external input), which underpin many cortical nonlinearities.⁴
• This is a scientific-community/workshop announcement rather than an empirical result, so no sample sizes, devices, or quantitative outcomes are reported.²³

Footnotes

1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMi0wFBVV95cUxNOXVMWnRYeWtRSkxuM0t2Uzd1bm5vODFCOGlkeDRNLXdDX0VnOXBKMUxXaWYwOExEMnRmeUNIUGM5czh5cTNtTDhQZm9RNHM0TzEwR1VlWUJ4bmRzZ18wWDFaX29qMzd5TUxLYVVqOEZnV21qOUlHeDRGbkhiVUgzY0hHMUVzRXB0bWU5WTZyVUpmUVRtUWVnS25NR3BpYkVfWlVYVnRBektyaDc1cmc4WXo2T1V0WVRDMWV3Z3JwTjJ0TXlwSW9iNzA5eG9uaGYwbkZZ?oc=5 ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/11/13/simons-foundation-now-accepting-applications-for-workshop-on-canonical-cortical-computations/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. https://www.simonsfoundation.org/ccnevents/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4944655/ ↩ ↩²