  State-space models provide an important body of techniques for analyzing
time-series, but their use requires estimating unobserved states. The optimal
estimate of the state is its conditional expectation given the observation
histories, and computing this expectation is hard when there are
nonlinearities. Existing filtering methods, including sequential Monte Carlo,
tend to be either inaccurate or slow. In this paper, we study a nonlinear
filter for nonlinear/non-Gaussian state-space models, which uses Laplace's
method, an asymptotic series expansion, to approximate the state's conditional
mean and variance, together with a Gaussian conditional distribution. This {\em
Laplace-Gaussian filter} (LGF) gives fast, recursive, deterministic state
estimates, with an error which is set by the stochastic characteristics of the
model and is, we show, stable over time. We illustrate the estimation ability
of the LGF by applying it to the problem of neural decoding and compare it to
sequential Monte Carlo both in simulations and with real data. We find that the
LGF can deliver superior results in a small fraction of the computing time.
