Hi Everyone,
We are excited to announce that the next CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) session for this semester will take place this Friday, November 27th. Dr. Ori Ossmy from New York University, will be speaking on “real-time processes in the development of behavioral problem solving”. Please see below for the abstract of the talk.
The talk will span from 2-3PM (EST) and the speaker will be presenting virtually over zoom (link below).
All are welcome!
Best regards, The CRAM Team
----------------------
Title: From macro to micro: Real-time processes in the development of behavioral problem solving
Abstract: Behavioral problem solving is ubiquitous across every age and culture—how to navigate a cluttered environment, use a tool, and so on. As our bodies, skills, and environments change, new problems emerge and require new means to solve them. With learning and development, children respond more adaptively and efficiently to environmental challenges and opportunities. Traditionally, developmental research focuses on macro changes in problem solving skills by identifying the ages at which children solve particular problems and characterizing differences among children at different points in learning or development. This outcome-oriented approach established that behavioral problem solving begins in infancy and improves with age and experience, but is limited in informing about how and why change occurs. In contrast, my ground hypothesis is that macro changes in problem solving emerge from micro, real-time experiences. These real-time experiences, in turn, play out in an interactive system of perceptual, neural, cognitive, and motor processes. The efficiency of these processes and their interactions differ widely among individuals. From cruising infants to soccer-playing robots, I test this hypothesis by adopting an innovative integrative approach that combines interdisciplinary perspectives (child development, cognitive neuroscience, motor control, computer science), methods (eye-tracking, EEG, motion tracking, robotics, computer vision, virtual reality, and video), ages (infants, children, adults), and tasks (manual and locomotor).
Kevin da Silva Castanheira is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: CRAM Nov 27th Ori Ossmy Time: Nov 27, 2020 02:00 PM Montreal
Join Zoom Meeting https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/84726666172
Hi Everyone,
This is a friendly reminder that there will be an online CRAM today at 2PM. Dr. Ossmy will be presenting his research on the development of problem solving. See below for details and the zoom link.
All are welcome!
Best, The CRAM Team
https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/84726666172
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: CRAM Friday November 27th, Dr. Ori Ossmy Date: 2020-11-23 10:44 From: cram cram@localhost To:
Hi Everyone,
We are excited to announce that the next CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) session for this semester will take place this Friday, November 27th. Dr. Ori Ossmy from New York University, will be speaking on “real-time processes in the development of behavioral problem solving”. Please see below for the abstract of the talk.
The talk will span from 2-3PM (EST) and the speaker will be presenting virtually over zoom (link below).
All are welcome!
Best regards, The CRAM Team
----------------------
Title: From macro to micro: Real-time processes in the development of behavioral problem solving
Abstract: Behavioral problem solving is ubiquitous across every age and culture—how to navigate a cluttered environment, use a tool, and so on. As our bodies, skills, and environments change, new problems emerge and require new means to solve them. With learning and development, children respond more adaptively and efficiently to environmental challenges and opportunities. Traditionally, developmental research focuses on macro changes in problem solving skills by identifying the ages at which children solve particular problems and characterizing differences among children at different points in learning or development. This outcome-oriented approach established that behavioral problem solving begins in infancy and improves with age and experience, but is limited in informing about how and why change occurs. In contrast, my ground hypothesis is that macro changes in problem solving emerge from micro, real-time experiences. These real-time experiences, in turn, play out in an interactive system of perceptual, neural, cognitive, and motor processes. The efficiency of these processes and their interactions differ widely among individuals. From cruising infants to soccer-playing robots, I test this hypothesis by adopting an innovative integrative approach that combines interdisciplinary perspectives (child development, cognitive neuroscience, motor control, computer science), methods (eye-tracking, EEG, motion tracking, robotics, computer vision, virtual reality, and video), ages (infants, children, adults), and tasks (manual and locomotor).
Kevin da Silva Castanheira is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: CRAM Nov 27th Ori Ossmy Time: Nov 27, 2020 02:00 PM Montreal
Join Zoom Meeting https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/84726666172
Constraining neural networks biologically to explain grounding
Friedemann PULVERMÜLLER
Thursday 3 DECEMBER at 10h30
Zoom link : https://uqam.zoom.us/j/96780028011https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fuqam.zoom.us%2Fj%2F96780028011&data=04%7C01%7Charnad%40ecs.soton.ac.uk%7C2bce020f4ca24b1bbd0d08d89240fd7f%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0%7C0%7C637420155123619228%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=f7EGbVvIRGgEvqp5dZVXFNPVx%2FQGlh1gmC8s61yxBI8%3D&reserved=0
Meaningful use of symbols requires grounding in action and perception through learning. The mechanisms of this sensorimotor grounding, however, are rarely specified in mechanistic terms; and mathematically precise formal models of the relevant learning processes are scarce. As the brain is the device that is critical for mechanistically supporting and indeed implementing grounding, modelling needs to take into account realistic neuronal processes in the human brain. This makes it desirable to use not just ‘neural’ networks that are vaguely similar to some aspects of real networks of neurons, but models implementing constraints imposed by neuronal structure and function, that is, biologically realistic learning and brain structure along with local and global structural connectivity and functional interaction.
After discussing brain constraints for cognitive modelling, the talk will focus on the biological implementation of grounding, in order to address the following questions:
Why do the brains of humans -- but not those of their closest relatives -- allow for verbal working memory and learning of huge vocabularies of symbols?
Why do different word and concept types seem to depend on different parts of the brain (‘category-specific’ semantic mechanisms)?
Why are there ‘semantic and conceptual hubs’ in the brain where general semantic knowledge is stored -- and why would these brain areas be different from those areas where grounding information is present (i.e., the sensory and motor cortices)?
And why should sensory deprivation shift language and conceptual processing toward ‘grounding areas’ -- for example toward the visual cortex in the blind?
I will argue that brain-constrained modelling is necessary to answer (some of) these questions and, more generally, to explain the mechanisms of grounding.
Friedemann Pulvermüller is a neuroscientist, psychologist and linguist whose research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms of language, meaning and action. He got PhDs from the Universities of Tübingen and Konstanz, worked for many years as a Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University, and is now a professor in the neuroscience of language and pragmatics at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he also directs the ‘Brain Language Laboratory’. His honors include an Early Career Award of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and an ERC Advanced Grant and his publications ca 250 journal papers and 8 books.
Pulvermüller, F., Garagnani, M., & Wennekers, T. (2014). Thinking in circuits: Towards neurobiological explanation in cognitive neuroscience. Biological Cybernetics, 108(5), 573-593. doi: 10.1007/s00422-014-0603-9 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/74246044.pdf
Pulvermüller, F. (2018). Neural reuse of action perception circuits for language, concepts and communication. Progress in Neurobiology, 160, 1-44. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2017.07.001 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008217300096
Schomers, M. R., Garagnani, M., & Pulvermüller, F. (2017). Neurocomputational consequences of evolutionary connectivity changes in perisylvian language cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 37(11), 3045-3055. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/11/3045?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medi...
Tomasello, R., Wennekers, T., Garagnani, M., & Pulvermüller, F. (2019). Visual cortex recruitment during language processing in blind individuals is explained by Hebbian learning. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1-16.
Hi Everyone,
We are excited to announce that the next CRAM (Cognitive Research at McGill) session for this semester will take place this Friday, February 26th. Dr. Evan Risko from the University of Waterloo, will be speaking on cognitive offloading and distributed cognition. Please see below for the abstract of the talk.
The talk will span from 2-3PM (EST) and the speaker will be presenting virtually over zoom (link below).
All are welcome!
Best regards, The CRAM Team ---------------------- zoom link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/83106724576?pwd=d09KZWttakthRGhmOTJudnhBTGV4QT09
Title: Cognitive Offloading: Adventures in Distributing Cognition
Abstract: A moment's reflection on our day-to-day cognitive lives reveals the intimate relation between human cognition and the manipulation of the body and objects in the physical environment. For example, we might tilt our head while trying to read rotated text, gesture while imagining spatial transformations, or store and retrieve to-be-remembered information using paper-and-pencil or computers. This ability to flexibly deploy mixtures of internal and external resources in pursuit of our cognitive goals likely represents a defining feature of what it means to be a successful cognitive agent in a complex environment. One crucial class of behaviour that these mind/body/world interactions afford is cognitive offloading: the use of physical action (or a series of actions), sometimes involving objects in the environment, that alter (typically reduce) the cognitive requirements of a given task. Despite the ubiquity of this type of behaviour, it has only recently become the target of systematic investigation in and of itself. This change reflects an increasing interest among cognitive scientists in ‘wider’ conceptions of cognition (e.g., embodied, embedded, extended, and distributed approaches) and (arguably) a broader consideration of the cognitive impacts of technologies that allow us to offload increasingly complex cognitive activities. I will review research from our laboratory and others that focuses on two broad questions with respect to cognitive offloading: (i) how we decide to offload, and (ii) the cognitive consequences of this behaviour and discuss the future of research in distributed cognition
Hi Everyone,
This is a friendly reminder that we will be hosting our next CRAM session today at 2PM EST over zoom. Dr Evan Risko, of the University of Waterloo, will be talking on embodied cognition see below for details.
Hope to see you there, the CRAM team
Zoom link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/83106724576?pwd=d09KZWttakthRGhmOTJudnhBTGV4QT09
Title: Cognitive Offloading: Adventures in Distributing Cognition
Abstract: A moment's reflection on our day-to-day cognitive lives reveals the intimate relation between human cognition and the manipulation of the body and objects in the physical environment. For example, we might tilt our head while trying to read rotated text, gesture while imagining spatial transformations, or store and retrieve to-be-remembered information using paper-and-pencil or computers. This ability to flexibly deploy mixtures of internal and external resources in pursuit of our cognitive goals likely represents a defining feature of what it means to be a successful cognitive agent in a complex environment. One crucial class of behaviour that these mind/body/world interactions afford is cognitive offloading: the use of physical action (or a series of actions), sometimes involving objects in the environment, that alter (typically reduce) the cognitive requirements of a given task. Despite the ubiquity of this type of behaviour, it has only recently become the target of systematic investigation in and of itself. This change reflects an increasing interest among cognitive scientists in ‘wider’ conceptions of cognition (e.g., embodied, embedded, extended, and distributed approaches) and (arguably) a broader consideration of the cognitive impacts of technologies that allow us to offload increasingly complex cognitive activities. I will review research from our laboratory and others that focuses on two broad questions with respect to cognitive offloading: (i) how we decide to offload, and (ii) the cognitive consequences of this behaviour and discuss the future of research in distributed cognition
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cram -
Stevan R Harnad, Mr