coggroup January 2015

coggroup@mx1.psych.mcgill.ca

2 participants
4 discussions

[Coggroup] Hebb Lecture + Journal blitz this Friday
by Esther Schott 26 Jan '15

26 Jan '15

(1) Reminder about the upcoming Hebb Lecture (which replaces the Cognitive Seminar this week) (2) Journal Blitz this Friday at 5pm in Thomson House (1) Hebb Lecture Dr. A. David Redish Title: "The Cognitive Rat: Looking Forward and Looking Back" Abstract: A key component of cognition is the ability to use imagined and counter-factual events to guide decision-making. I will show how applying neural decoding calculation operations to neural ensembles recorded during behavior can identify moments of imagined and counter-factual events and differentiate those events from noise. The timing and information content of these non-local representations provides evidence for specific algorithmic operations during decision-making. I will describe several examples of cognitive, non-local operations during behavioral decision-making processes, including both spatial and non-spatial examples. Friday January 30th 2015 15:30 - 17:00 S1/3 Stewart Biology Building In addition to his main lecture at 3:30pm, Dr. Redish will give an informal morning seminar in which he will lead a discussion on multiple decision-making systems. The morning seminar will take place at 10:30am in room N7/14, Stewart Biology Building. Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend. (2) After the talk, we will gather in Thomson House for the first Journal Blitz of the semester; join us to tell us about an article you have read recently, hear about what others have read, and discuss (over beer and nachos or drinks and snacks of your choice). Please forward this message to your students and other interested parties. Thanks, Esther -- Esther Schott Graduate Student, MIDC Department of Psychology McGill University http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/midccdem/ You are receiving this message because you are a member of a listserv for the McGill Psychology Department Cognitive Area Seminar. The speakers for this semester are listed here: http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/misc/bbcseminar/ If you would like to be added or removed from the list, please go to the link below and follow the instructions. http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/computing/listserv.htm To SUBSCRIBE, you should send an email to: listproc(a)ego.psych.mcgill.ca<mailto:listproc@ego.psych.mcgill.ca> The email should contain a single line in the message (not in the subject line) that says: subscribe coggroup <Your Name> as in subscribe coggroup Joe Smith To UNSUBSCRIBE . you should send an email to listproc(a)ego.psych.mcgill.ca<mailto:listproc@ego.psych.mcgill.ca> The email should contain a single line in the message (not in the subject line) that says: unsubscribe coggroup <Your Name> as in unsubscribe coggroup Joe Smith

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[Coggroup] Reminder for Cognitive Area Seminar: January 16th, Stevan Harnad (UQAM)
by Esther Schott 15 Jan '15

15 Jan '15

***Apologies for multiple postings*** The first Cognitive Area Seminar this semester will take place on January 16th, 2015 15h30-17h00 in W7/21, Stewart Biology Building. There will be snacks! Learned Whorfian Effects and Dimensional Reduction Stevan Harnad (presenting the ongoing work of Xi-Wei Kang [U Southampton], Phlippe Vincent-Lamarre [UQAM, U Ottawa], Fernanda Perez Gay [UQAM, McGill] and Daniel Rivas [McGill)] According to the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis, language influences how we perceive the world. All the well-known evidence for this (e.g., color terms, Inuit snow terms, Hopi perception of the future, Chinese perception of counterfactuals) has turned out to be false. I will present some new evidence that perceived similarity is changed by learning to sort stimuli (digital drawings of fish) into named categories ("Limfish" and "Ailfish"). Within-category similarity increases and between-category similarity decreases after successful category learning (an effect called "categorical perception" CP). This Whorfian effect is stronger the harder it is to learn the category, because fewer features co-vary with category membership, making it harder to find which features to selectively attend to and which features to ignore. Our hypothesis is that the CP effect arises from this dimensional reduction. In closing I will make some links with the symbol grounding problem of how words get their meanings.

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[Coggroup] Special Seminar: Stanislas Dehaene
by Sylvain Baillet, Dr 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

SPECIAL SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT: Thursday, February 19 @ 11 am Hosted by the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre, MNI "The Multiple Effects of Literacy on the Brain" Prof Stanislas Dehaene Chair, Experimental Cognitive Psychology, Collège de France, Paris Director, Cognitive NeuroImaging Unit (Inserm-CEA), NeuroSpin Stanislas Dehaene received his training in mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, then completed a PhD in cognitive psychology with Jacques Mehler, post-doctoral studies with Michael Posner, as well as neuronal modelling studies with Jean-Pierre Changeux. He has been working since 1997 Neuroimaging Units of the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (Orsay and Neurospin), where he now directs the Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit since 2001. In September 2005 he was elected as a full professor on the newly created chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France in Paris. Stanislas Dehaene's interests concern the cerebral bases of specifically human cognitive functions such as language, calculation, and reasoning. The team uses a variety of experimental methods, including mental chronometry in normal subjects, cognitive analyses of brain-lesioned patients, and brain-imaging studies with positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and high-density recordings of event-related potentials. Formal models of minimal neuronal networks are also devised and simulated in an attempt to throw some links between molecular, physiological, imaging, and behavioral data. Stanislas Dehaene's main scientific contributions include the study of the organization of the cerebral system for number processing. Using converging evidence from PET, EEG/MEG, fMRI, and brain lesions, Stanislas Dehaene demonstrated the central role played by a region of the intraparietal sulcus in understanding quantities and arithmetic (the number sense). He was also the first to demonstrate that subliminal presentations of words can yield detectable cortical activations in fMRI, and has used these data to support an original theory of conscious and nonconscious processing in the human brain. With neurologist Laurent Cohen, he also studied the neural networks of reading and demonstrated the crucial role of the left occipito-temporal region in word recognition (the visual word form area). Stanislas Dehaene is the author of over 100 scientific publications in major international journals. He has received several international prizes including the McDonnell Centennial Fellowship and the Louis D. prize of the French Academy of Sciences (with D. Lebihan). He has published an acclaimed book (The Number Sense), which has been translated in eight languages. He has also edited three books on brain imaging, consciousness, and brain evolution, and has authored two general-audience films on the human brain. He is the associate editor of Cognition, an international journal of Cognitive Science. [cid:72939127-0D04-4719-909A-CF9D50F9E5C7] Sylvain. _____________ Sylvain Baillet, PhD Professor, Neurology, Neurosurgery & Biomedical Engineering MNI Killam and FRQS Senior Scholar Interim Director, McConnell Brain Imaging Centre Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University Celebrate the BIC's 30th anniversary with us on Feb 11, 2015! Program & (free) registration: http://mcgill.ca/bic/bic30

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[Coggroup] Cognitive Area Seminar: January 16th, Stevan Harnad (UQAM)
by Esther Schott 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

***Apologies for multiple postings*** (1) 1st Cognitive Area Seminar: January 16th, Stevan Harnad (2) Information about Cognitive Area Seminar + Journal Blitz this semester (1) The first Cognitive Area Seminar this semester will take place on January 16th, 2015 15h30-17h00 in W7/21, Stewart Biology Building: Learned Whorfian Effects and Dimensional Reduction Stevan Harnad (presenting the ongoing work of Xi-Wei Kang [U Southampton], Phlippe Vincent-Lamarre [UQAM, U Ottawa], Fernanda Perez Gay [UQAM, McGill] and Daniel Rivas [McGill)] According to the Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis, language influences how we perceive the world. All the well-known evidence for this (e.g., color terms, Inuit snow terms, Hopi perception of the future, Chinese perception of counterfactuals) has turned out to be false. I will present some new evidence that perceived similarity is changed by learning to sort stimuli (digital drawings of fish) into named categories ("Limfish" and "Ailfish"). Within-category similarity increases and between-category similarity decreases after successful category learning (an effect called "categorical perception" CP). This Whorfian effect is stronger the harder it is to learn the category, because fewer features co-vary with category membership, making it harder to find which features to selectively attend to and which features to ignore. Our hypothesis is that the CP effect arises from this dimensional reduction. In closing I will make some links with the symbol grounding problem of how words get their meanings. (2) This semester, the talks will be held on Fridays 15:30-17:00 in Stewart Biology W7/21, on days when there is not a Psychology or Linguistic colloquium. The speakers will be listed here: http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/misc/bbcseminar/ Please mark your calendars for the following days: January 16th Cognitive Area Seminar January 30th (Journal Blitz only, after Psych Department Hebb lecture) February 13th Cognitive Area Seminar February 27th Cognitive Area Seminar (followed by Journal Blitz, see below) March 27th Cognitive Area Seminar (followed by Journal Blitz, see below) About the Journal Blitz: The Journal Blitz is an informal chance to get to know people outside your research group/department. It starts around 17:00 (after the talk) in Thompson House. We meet in to talk about articles (on any topic) we have read, presenting what we liked about them in 3-5 minutes while eating nachos and enjoying a drink. Both the seminar and the blitz are open to students, faculty, post-docs, and whoever else who is interested. Please forward this message to your students and other interested parties. Esther If you would like to be added or removed from the list, please follow these instructions: To SUBSCRIBE, you should send an email to: listproc(a)ego.psych.mcgill.ca The email should contain a single line in the message (not in the subject line) that says: subscribe coggroup <Your Name> as in subscribe coggroup Joe Smith To UNSUBSCRIBE . you should send an email to listproc(a)ego.psych.mcgill.ca The email should contain a single line in the message (not in the subject line) that says: unsubscribe coggroup <Your Name> as in unsubscribe coggroup Joe Smith

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coggroup January 2015