Embracing disorder: making sense of complex population codes

What is the nature of neural representations? Many studies addressing this question searched for single neurons with easily interpretable activity profiles, even though all cognitive tasks require the joint activity of a large population of neurons. In this talk I highlight the "other" neurons, and show that when considered as a population these "disordered" neurons can support behavioral tasks - and are even a better substrate for flexible tasks than "ordered" neurons are. Using a combination of data analysis from the labs of Ranulfo Romo and Earl Miller with numerical simulations and analytical calculations I will try to make all of these notions and statements more rigorous and precise.