Learning a spin glass: determining Hamiltonians from metastable states

We study the problem of determining the Hamiltonian of a fully connected Ising Spin Glass of $N$ units from a set of measurements, whose sizes needs to be ${\cal O}(N^2)$ bits. The student-teacher scenario, used to study learning in feed-forward neural networks, is here extended to spin systems with arbitrary couplings. The set of measurements consists of data about the local minima of the rugged energy landscape. We compare simulations and analytical approximations for the resulting learning curves obtained by using different algorithms.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Physica

Stability diagrams for bursting neurons modeled by three-variable maps

We study a simple map as a minimal model of excitable cells. The map has two fast variables which mimic the behavior of class I neurons, undergoing a sub-critical Hopf bifurcation. Adding a third slow variable allows the system to present bursts and other interesting biological behaviors. Bifurcation lines which locate the excitability region are obtained for different planes in parameter space.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publicatio