From psimen at Math.Princeton.EDU Mon Mar 1 18:59:05 2004 From: psimen at Math.Princeton.EDU (Patrick Simen) Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 18:59:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: PhD thesis available: Neural mechanisms for control in complex cognition Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, My PhD thesis, 'Neural mechanisms for control in complex cognition', is now available at http://www.math.princeton.edu/~psimen/SimenThesis.pdf. The abstract and table of contents are presented below. I hope it will be of interest to you! --Patrick Simen ABSTRACT Neural network models of complex cognitive tasks are difficult to build. Most previous work has focused on the difficulty of using structured symbolic representations in neural networks. This thesis focuses on the problem of control. During problem solving, some form of control is necessary for sequencing operations, for selecting actions, and for manipulating goal representations. I present a set of control mechanisms inspired and constrained by brain organization that are powerful enough to guarantee basic problem solving ability; in fact, I show that they are computationally universal. These mechanisms exploit a simple method for controlling the temporal characteristics of activation in continuous-time neural networks that makes neural control of complex processes possible in properly organized neural cognitive models. The basic computational primitive is inspired by corticostriatal loops in which the cortical component is composed of columns organized in layers. An input layer and an output layer each form winner-take-all networks. These layers are connected via a corticostriatal loop that produces a controllable amount of internal propagation delay in signal transmission from input layer to output layer. Modules can be composed hierarchically to produce goal-directed control circuits for cognitive models that are formally equivalent to finite automata and share many properties of symbolic production systems. These control circuits are instantiated in a neural cognitive model of the Tower of London problem-solving task. The model implements the assumption that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is preferentially involved in representing subgoal information during problem solving, and that frontostriatal loop circuits provide a timing function that is critical for proper problem solving performance. Normal subject performance is accurately simulated by the model, and performance under conditions of simulated prefrontal lesions and Parkinson's disease captures speed and accuracy impairments exhibited in patient data from the literature. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Computational models of control 1.1 Objective 1.2 Defining control 1.2.1 Control systems theory 1.2.2 Control in formal computational systems 1.2.3 Control in the brain 1.3 Cognitive architectures based on production systems 1.3.1 Working memory, goals and productions 1.3.2 Conflict and resolution 1.3.3 Learning 1.3.4 Distributed control 1.4 Existing neural models of control and symbolic processing 1.4.1 Models of neural symbol processing 1.4.2 Models of control 1.5 A neural cognitive architecture 1.6 Summary 2. Controlling and exploiting the temporal dynamics of neural activation 2.1 Neural activation and positive feedback 2.1.1 The activation function 2.1.2 Self-excitation 2.2 Measuring and encoding duration 2.3 Summary 3. Using control to implement computationally universal neural primitives 3.1 Finite automata and Turing machines 3.1.1 Finite automata as control devices 3.1.2 Turing machines 3.2 Neural finite automata and Turing machines 3.3 Components of continuous-time neural finite automata and Turing machines 3.3.1 Encoding internal state 3.3.2 Representing discrete values 3.3.3 Implementing voltage sources 3.3.4 Implementing simple logic functions 3.3.5 Implementing simple memory devices 3.3.6 Implementing gates and flip-flops 3.3.7 Delay in columnar networks 3.3.8 Clocks 3.4 Implementing finite automata 3.4.1 Maintaining internal state and encoding acceptance 3.4.2 Input formats 3.4.3 Computing the next state 3.5 Neural tape mechanisms 3.6 Summary 4. Using control to implement simplified neural production systems 4.1 Production systems, classifier systems and control 4.2 Defining neural productions 4.2.1 Productions are connections between modules 4.2.2 Productions are atomic and require effective representation 4.2.3 Limitations of the production-connection mapping 4.3 Activation regulation for conflict resolution 4.3.1 Preferences 4.3.2 Safe ramp-up rates in regulators 4.3.3 When voting stops 4.3.4 Combining excitatory and inhibitory regulators 4.4 Goals 4.5 Impasse detection 4.6 Summary 5. A neural model of the Tower of London task 5.1 Basic model structure 5.2 Tower of London model 5.2.1 Sensorimotor backbone 5.2.2 Perceptual reasoning 5.2.3 Move selection and gating 5.2.4 Goals 5.2.5 Subgoals 5.2.6 Implemented algorithm 5.3 Neural convergence detection and subgoal generation 5.4 Performance of the model 5.5 Summary 6. Mapping the computational architecture onto cortex and corticostriatal loop circuits 6.1 Modules map onto cortex 6.1.1 Laminar structure 6.1.2 Columnar structure 6.1.3 Regional mapping 6.2 Column structures map onto corticostriatal loop circuits combined with cortical columns 6.2.1 More detailed circuitry 6.2.2 Cognitive functions and their impairments by disease 6.2.3 Corticostriatal analogues in the column primitive 6.2.4 Discussion 6.3 Activation regulators map onto anterior cingulate cortex 6.4 Summary 7. Simulating the behavior of normal controls, prefrontal patients and Parkinson's patients on the Tower of London task 7.1 Predictions of DLPFC mapping 7.2 Predictions of frontostriatal mapping 7.3 Summary 8. Discussion 8.1 Summary 8.2 Contributions 8.2.1 A focus on control 8.2.2 An hypothesis regarding brain organization and psychological function 8.2.3 A means for temporal coding in neural networks 8.2.4 Demonstrates flexible control through finite automaton and Turing machine emulation 8.2.5 An example of the power of symbolic dynamics 8.2.6 A simple method for the construction of complex neural cognitive models 8.2.7 Mechanisms that use analog quantities for computation 8.2.8 Demonstrates the value of committing to a low-level physical model of neural processing 8.3 Remaining issues 8.3.1 Synaptic modification 8.3.2 The binding problem 8.3.3 More realistic neurons Appendix A. Sequence and duration learning A.1 Introduction A.2 Predictive error driven learning A.3 Computational motivations for laminar structure A.3.1 Asymmetric connection learning in recurrent networks A.3.2 Inhibitors of input and output A.3.3 A synaptic triad mechanism for learning A.3.4 Recruit-driven timing mechanisms for plasticity A.3.5 Recruitment of columns A.4 Learning durations with inhibitory strength modification A.4.1 Preventing propagation during recording A.4.2 The rate of weakening A.4.3 Isolating precision components from fluctuations A.5 Performance of the full sequence learning circuit Appendix B. Glitches and glitch protection Appendix C. Goals and a goal stack mechanism C.1 Properties of goals C.2 Stacking goals C.3 Performance of the goal stack C.4 Incorporating the goal stack mechanism into a column C.5 The goal stack as a tool for cognitive modeling ************************************************************************* Patrick Simen 209 Fine Hall Research Fellow Washington Rd. Center for the Study of Brain, Princeton, NJ 08544-1000 Mind and Behavior Program in Applied and Phone: (609) 258-6155 and Computational Mathematics Fax: (609) 258-1367 Princeton University email: psimen at math.princeton.edu ************************************************************************* From gs at ukim.edu.mk Tue Mar 2 17:22:45 2004 From: gs at ukim.edu.mk (Georgi Stojanov) Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 23:22:45 +0100 Subject: Final CFP: Epigenetic Robotics 2004 - deadline extension Message-ID: <000a01c400a5$69ea67b0$b28395c2@toshibauser> EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 Fourth International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: EPIROB2004 Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems EPIROB2004 http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 August 25-27, 2004 EPIROB2004 Location: LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa EPIROB2004 Genoa, Italy EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 Extended Submission Deadline: March 21st, 2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 This workshop focuses on combining developmental psychology, neuroscience, biology, and robotics with the goal of understanding the functioning of biological systems. Epigenetic systems, either natural or artificial, share a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. Epigenetic robotics includes the two-fold goal of understanding biological systems by the interdisciplinary integration between neural and engineering sciences and, simultaneously, that of enabling robots and artificial systems to develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for specific environments. To this aim, psychological theory and empirical evidence should be used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. We encourage the submission from different disciplines such as robotics, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, biology or neurophysiology, as well as interdisciplinary work bridging the gap between science and engineering. Subject Areas include, but are not limited to: * The role of motivations, emotions, and value systems in development; * The development of: concepts, consciousness and self-awareness, emotion, imitation, intentionality, intersubjectivity, joint attention, learning, motivation, non-verbal and verbal communication, self, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference, social learning, social relationships, social understanding ("mind reading", "theory of mind"), value systems; * Interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and experience; * Related issues in algorithms, robotics, simulated robots, and embodied systems; * Strong AI (true intelligence and autonomy) versus weak AI; * Related issues from human and nonhuman empirical studies. For summaries of the papers from the latest workshops see: Zlatev and Balkenius (2001), Prince (2002), and Berthouze and Prince (2003). Please send any questions to the workshop co-chairs: Giorgio Metta (pasa at dist.unige.it) and Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Sponsors LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy Communications Research Laboratory, Japan Location University of Genoa, Italy Invited Speakers Luciano Fadiga, Dept. of Biomedical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Italy Claes von Hofsten, Dept. of Psychology, University of Upssala, Sweden Jrgen Konczak, Human Sensorimotor Control Lab, University of Minnesota, USA Jacqueline Nadel, CNRS, University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris, France Submissions Papers not exceeding eight (8) pages should be submitted electronically (PDF or Postscript) as attachment files to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Extended abstracts (maximum two pages) can also be submitted, and will be presented as posters (extended abstracts should also be submitted in PDF or Postscript as attachments to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Further instructions to authors will be posted on the workshop web page: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org Special issues Authors of a selection of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their manuscript to one of two special issues on Epigenetic Robotics to appear in Interaction Studies: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=IS and the Cognitive Systems Research Journal: http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/journal.html. Important Dates March 1st, 2004: Deadline for submission of papers and posters March 21st, 2004: Extended submission deadline April 21st, 2004: Notification of acceptance for papers and posters May 21st, 2004: Deadline for camera ready-papers & posters August 25-27, 2004: Workshop Organizing Committee Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Luc Berthouze (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan) Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy) Christopher G. Prince (Computer Science, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Giulio Sandini (LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy) Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute, SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia) Program Committee Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Luc Berthouze (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Aude Billard (Autonomous Systems Laboratory, EPFL, Switzerland) Daniel Bullock (Cognitive & Neural Systems Department, Boston University, USA) Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK) Yiannis Demiris (Intelligent and Interactive Systems, Imperial College, UK) Luciano Fadiga (University of Ferrara, Italy) Peter Grdenfors (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Philippe Gaussier (Universite de Cergy-Pointoise & ENSEA, France) Gyorgy Gergely (Institute for Psychological Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary) Frdric Kaplan (Sony Computer Science Lab Paris, France) Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan) Valerie Kuhlmeier (Yale University, Department of Psychology, USA) Max Lungarella (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Yuval Marom (School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University, Australia) Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy) Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France) Chrystopher Nehaniv (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK) Rolf Pfeifer (AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland) Christopher G. Prince (Computer Science, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Deb Roy (Media Laboratory, MIT, USA) Giulio Sandini (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy) Brian Scassellati (Department of Computer Science, Yale University, USA) Stefan Schaal (Computer Science Department, USC, USA) Matthew Schlesinger (Psychology Department, Southern Illinois University, USA) Sylvain Sirois (Department of Psychology, Manchester University, UK) Michael Spratling (School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, UK) Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute, SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia) Gert Westermann (Department of psychology, Oxford Brookes University, UK) Tom Ziemke (Department of Computer Science, University of Skovde, Sweden) Publication of Papers & Poster Abstracts Papers and poster abstracts will be published in the proceedings, and archived at CogPrints (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk). REFERENCES Zlatev, J. & Balkenius, C. (2001). Introduction: Why "epigenetic robotics"? Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems (pp. 1-4). Lund University Cognitive Studies, Volume 85. Available at: http://www.lucs.lu.se/Epigenetic-robotics/Papers/Zlatev.Balkenius.2001.p df Prince, C. G. (2002). Introduction: The Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics. In C. G. Prince, Y. Demiris, Y. Marom, H. Kozima, & C. Balkenius (Eds.) Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Cognitive Studies Volume 94. Available at: http://www.cprince.com/PubRes/EpigeneticRobotics2002/Prince-Intro.pdf Weng, J., McClelland, J., Pentland, A., Sporns, O., Stockman, I., Sur, M., & Thelen, E. (2001). Autonomous mental development by robots and animals. Science, 291, 599-600. Available at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/dl/SciencePaper.pdf Berthouze, L. and Prince, C. G. (2003). Introduction: The Third International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics. In C. G. Prince, L. Berthouze, H. Kozima, D. Bullock, G. Stojanov, & C. Balkenius (Eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Cognitive Studies Volume 101. Available at: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cprince/epigenetic-robotics/2003/intro.pdf --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.600 / Virus Database: 381 - Release Date: 28.02.2004 From Pat.Wakefield-Perna at siemens.com Tue Mar 2 14:30:32 2004 From: Pat.Wakefield-Perna at siemens.com (Wakefield-Perna Pat) Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 14:30:32 -0500 Subject: Research Scientist position at Siemens Medical Solutions Message-ID: <6A90CDDDD8379047893F0543F0A47A69D62262@mlvv9mpe.ww005.siemens.net> RESEARCH SCIENTIST Computer-Aided Diagnosis & Therapy Solutions (CAD) Group Siemens Medical Solutions, Malvern, PA The Computer-Aided Diagnosis & Therapy Solutions Group, Siemens Medical Solutions, USA, Inc. is building a world-class R&D team with researchers in machine learning and/or probabilistic inference. We have hired several scientists and continue to grow with multiple, immediate and ongoing, positions for Research Scientists (senior and entry level). Outstanding candidates with the ability to solve challenging medical problems, while continuing to publish in leading journals and conferences will find a stimulating and rewarding career in the CAD Group. In this position, you will conduct leading-edge research in reasoning from incomplete and structured medical patient data, classification of patients/diseases, as well as machine learning fo automatically extracting patterns from large amounts of numeric, imaging, text, and symbolic data, combine imaging, clinical, and textual information, and other related areas. Candidates must have significant research background in machine learning (classification) and/or probabilistic inference, with publications in leading conferences/journals. Ideal candidates will have a Ph.D. in CS/EE/Statistics/Applied Math or an engineering discipline with an inter-disciplinary background in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, and/or statistics, with a proven record in research, innovative thinking, real world problem solving, and fast prototyping. Database and/or medical experience is a plus, but not required. Primary areas of interest include: a) All areas of probabilistic inference, Bayesian methods, temporal reasoning & inference, probabilistic graphical models (e.g., Bayes Nets), decision-making under uncertainty, and statistical learning. b) Classification methods from machine learning and statistics, and/or neural networks. Additional areas of interest include feature extraction, mining large databases, predictive modeling, pattern recognition, text mining, databases, natural language processing, information retrieval, time series analysis and forecasting. (Note: To be considered for this position, you must have a Ph.D., or be graduating fairly soon with a Ph.D. - latest by summer/fall 2004.) Siemens Medical Solutions is located in Malvern, PA. Malvern lies within the Main Line area of the Philadelphia suburbs (with Philly being less than a one hour drive away). We offer a competitive salary and benefits package that reflects our leadership status. For consideration, please click on the link below and apply online. http://careers.peopleclick.com/jobposts/Client40_Siemens/BU1/External/221-10071.htm Please also include a list of publications; recent Ph.D.'s or Ph.D. candidates should also include their thesis abstract. (Kindly indicate how you learned of this job when you reply) Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. From sunny at sunnybains.com Thu Mar 4 09:11:35 2004 From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains) Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 14:11:35 +0000 Subject: Neuromorphic engineering newsletter available online Message-ID: The Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering has funded a new twice-yearly newsletter called The Neuromorphic Engineer that includes short articles about work in the field as well as pieces about books and software. The first issue has recently come out and is now available for download at: http://www.ine-web.org/ Those who would be interested in contributing to future issues should feel free to contact me directly. Best wishes, Sunny Bains Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer From vhafner at ifi.unizh.ch Fri Mar 5 04:20:51 2004 From: vhafner at ifi.unizh.ch (Verena Vanessa Hafner) Date: 5 Mar 2004 10:20:51 +0100 Subject: PhD studentship in robotic models of emotion Message-ID: Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in robotic models of emotion at the University of the West of England, Bristol, in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. Closing Date: 31 March 2004. Informal enquiries can be made to the research supervisor Dr Dylan Evans (http://www.dylan.org.uk E-mail: Dylan.Evans at uwe.ac.uk, phone: +44-177-328-3294). Applications are invited for a PhD studentship to enable the successful applicant pursue research leading to a PhD in the area of robotic models of emotion. The research will be conducted under the supervision of Dr Dylan Evans, Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Autonomous Systems. The successful candidate will conduct research into mechanisms for the recognition of human facial expressions of emotion suitable for incorporation into humanoid robotic platforms, and into mechanisms that would enable humanoid robots to express recognisable emotions. This research will have a strong component of experimentation and testing using commercial and bespoke robotic platforms and suitable methods for quantitative and qualitative analysis of results. The postholder will have access to the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory (http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk), and work as part of the newly established Humanoid Robotics Group. Applicants should hold a first degree, and preferably an MSc, in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline and have some knowledge of and/or experience in biologically-inspired artificial intelligence and robotics, solid experience programming mobile robots, and motivation and ability to work proactively within a multi-disciplinary team. Previous exposure to areas such as adaptive behaviour, affective/cognitive neuroscience, or the psychology of emotion, and motivation and skills in organising academic meetings and research projects would be highly desirable. The position is full-time for a period of three years, with a start date around September/October 2004. Closing Date: 31 March 2004. Informal enquiries can be made to the research supervisor Dr Dylan Evans (http://www.dylan.org.uk E-mail: Dylan.Evans at uwe.ac.uk, phone: +44-177-328-3294). From "Jeffrey Gray" at ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu Fri Mar 5 13:36:34 2004 From: "Jeffrey Gray" at ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu ("Jeffrey Gray"@ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu) Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:36:34 +0000 Subject: Lewis/Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text of the forthcoming BBS target article: Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls at bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis, University of Toronto Abstract: Emotion theorists and neurobiologists have much to share but they lack a common language for doing so. Emotion theorists rely on causal assumptions that are simple, linear, and cognitivist in character, and they emphasize psychological wholes that cannot be explained by the interaction of their constituents. Conversely, neurobiologists focus on the interaction of multiple components, invoking complex, bidirectional causal processes, but they rarely extend their analysis to psychologically meaningful wholes. Dynamic systems principles can provide a bridge between the psychology and neurobiology of emotion: (1) by explaining psychological as well as neural processes in terms of bidirectional causation and emergent part-whole relations, and (2) by grounding a model of self-organizing emotional states in explicit correspondences between psychological and neural events. I first argue that the application of dynamic systems ideas to emotion theory permits a reconceptualization of emotion-appraisal states as self-organizing wholes. These are proposed to emerge from bidirectional causal interactions among perceptual, cognitive, and emotional constituents, and to maintain those interactions through vertical ("circular") causality. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion as well as mechanisms of integration by which they interact. Based on dynamic systems concepts, these mechanisms are identified as nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion-appraisal states with reference to these neural mechanisms. KEYWORDS: appraisal, bidirectional causality, cognition, dynamic systems, emotion, neurobiology, part-whole relations, self-organization FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lewis-01212003/Referees/ ======================================================================= SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Jeffrey Gray - Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs at bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- From mejia at ncifcrf.gov Fri Mar 5 13:49:01 2004 From: mejia at ncifcrf.gov (Raymond Mejia) Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 13:49:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: Gordon Research Conference on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics Message-ID: Gordon Research Conference on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics June 6-11, 2004 Tilton School Tilton, NH http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/theobio.htm A copy of the program is appended (Please Post). Apply using the icon at the bottom of the webpage. Best regards -- Ray Raymond Mej?a E-mail: ray at helix.nih.gov LCE, NHLBI, NIH Tel: (301)496-9972 10 Center Drive, Room B1D400 Fax: 301-402-2389 Bethesda, MD 20892-1061 USA http://mrb.niddk.nih.gov/ray/ ---------------------------------- 2004 GRC on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics June 6-11, 2004 Tilton School Tilton, NH Chairs: Tim C Elston & Raymond Mejia Vice Chair: Paul C Bressloff SUNDAY 2:00 pm - 9:00 pmArrival and Check-in 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmMotors and Biological Motion Discussion Leader: Ed Pate (Washington State University) Sean Sun (Johns Hopkins University) Roger Cooke (UC, San Francisco) MONDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 8:30 amGroup Photo 9:00 am - 12:30 pmSpatial Components in the Modeling of Ecological Processes Discussion Leader: Graciela Canziani (Universidad del Centro, Tandil) Renato Casagrandi (Politecnico di Milano) Horst Malchow (Universit?t Osnabr?ck) Mike Neubert (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmInnovations in Theoretical Immunology Discussion Leader: Ramit Mehr (Bar-Ilan University) Can Kesmir (Utrecht University) Nigel Burroughs (University of Warwick) 9:30 pmPoster Session TUESDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmNeurobiology of Breathing, Whiskering and Electrolocation Discussion Leader: Paul Bressloff (University of Utah) Christopher Del Negro (College of William and Mary) Andre Longtin (University of Ottawa) Bard Ermentrout (University of Pittsburgh) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmEmergent Species/Diseases and Invasion Discussion Leader: Carlos Castillo-Chavez (Cornell University) Simon Levin (Princeton University) Sally Blower (UCLA) 9:30 pmPoster Session WEDNESDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmSystems Biology Discussion Leader: James Liao(UCLA) Mark Goulian (University of Pennsylvania) Benno Schwikowski (Institute for Systems Biology) Isidore Rigoutsos (IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmModeling transcriptional control in gene regulatory networks Discussion Leader: Jeff Hasty (UCSD) John Reinitz (SUNY) Terry Hwa (UCSD) 9:30 pmPoster Session THURSDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmBiofluids and Biological Gels Discussion Leader: Aaron Fogelson (University of Utah) Jim Keener (University of Utah) Robert Guy (University of Utah) Kasia Rejniak (Mathematical Biosciences Institute) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmThe Future of Biomathematics and Theoretical Biology Discussion Leader: Alan Hastings(UC Davis) Lee Segel (Weizmann Institute of Science) Kim Cuddington (Ohio University) 9:30 pmPoster Session FRIDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 amDepart http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/theobio.htm From nestor.parga at uam.es Tue Mar 9 11:59:05 2004 From: nestor.parga at uam.es (Nestor Parga) Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 17:59:05 +0100 Subject: Post-doct in Computational Neuroscience - Madrid Message-ID: <404DF7D9.9080104@uam.es> POST-DOCTORAL POSITION - 2004 (Program "Juan de la Cierva") Computational and Systems Neuroscience - a three year position in Madrid - Interested candidates are invited to apply for a post-doctoral position for research work in Computational and Systems Neuroscience at the "Group of Computational Neuroscience", Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain. These are three year positions funded by the Spanish Ministery of Science and Technology (MCYT) within a program known as "Juan de la Cierva". More information about this program can be found at the MCYT's web site: http://www.mcyt.es/CAJAL/default.htm The position would start before the end of this year 2004. All nationalities are eligible, although less than 3 years of postdoctoral experience is required. The final choice among the candidates - supported by research groups in Spain - will be made by the MCYT. Eligible candidates should have a Ph. D. in scientific disciplines such as neuroscience, physics, maths or computer science and possess a good background and interest in theoretical neurobiology. Candidates are expected to work in interaction with the theoretical team of the Computational Neuroscience group to carry out joint work on information processing in the brain Details about the current work of the group can be found at the web site: http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/ Interested candidates are encouraged to send a description of their research interests, their curriculum vitae, a list of all publications and the names of three scientists who could send recommendation letters to the address below, Deadline: March 16, 2004 (the absolute deadline, fixed by the MCYT, is March 22) Contact person: N?stor Parga Address: Dr. N?stor Parga Departamento de F?sica Te?rica Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid 28049 Madrid Spain E-mail : nestor.parga at uam.es http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/nestor/index.html From calls at bbsonline.org Wed Mar 10 14:59:58 2004 From: calls at bbsonline.org (Behavioral & Brain Sciences) Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 19:59:58 +0000 Subject: Lewis/Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text of the forthcoming BBS target article: Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls at bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis, University of Toronto Abstract: Emotion theorists and neurobiologists have much to share but they lack a common language for doing so. Emotion theorists rely on causal assumptions that are simple, linear, and cognitivist in character, and they emphasize psychological wholes that cannot be explained by the interaction of their constituents. Conversely, neurobiologists focus on the interaction of multiple components, invoking complex, bidirectional causal processes, but they rarely extend their analysis to psychologically meaningful wholes. Dynamic systems principles can provide a bridge between the psychology and neurobiology of emotion: (1) by explaining psychological as well as neural processes in terms of bidirectional causation and emergent part-whole relations, and (2) by grounding a model of self-organizing emotional states in explicit correspondences between psychological and neural events. I first argue that the application of dynamic systems ideas to emotion theory permits a reconceptualization of emotion-appraisal states as self-organizing wholes. These are proposed to emerge from bidirectional causal interactions among perceptual, cognitive, and emotional constituents, and to maintain those interactions through vertical ("circular") causality. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion as well as mechanisms of integration by which they interact. Based on dynamic systems concepts, these mechanisms are identified as nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion-appraisal states with reference to these neural mechanisms. KEYWORDS: appraisal, bidirectional causality, cognition, dynamic systems, emotion, neurobiology, part-whole relations, self-organization FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lewis-01212003/Referees/ ======================================================================= SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Jeffrey Gray - Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs at bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- From nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz Wed Mar 10 21:45:56 2004 From: nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz (Nik Kasabov) Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 15:45:56 +1300 Subject: ICONIP'2004 Submission reminder Message-ID: The 10th International Conference on Neuro-Information Processing ICONIP'2004, sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly APNNA, will be held in Calcutta, India, 21-25 November 2004. Paper submissions are encouraged to the following tracks: Brain-like computing Computational neuro- science Neuroinformatics Neural network hardware Cognitive science Learning algorithms Evolutionary computation Quantum computing Bayesian computing Novel neural network architectures Support vector machines and kernel methods Fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy and other hybrid systems Brain study models Bio-informatics Pattern recognition Time series prediction and data analysis Image processing and vision Speech and signal processing Key Dates: Papers Submission: March 15, 2004 Tutorial / Special Session Proposals: June 30, 2004 Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2004 Camera-Ready Copy Due: August 30, 2004 Early Registration: September 15, 2004 Further Details: WWW site: http://www.isical.ac.in/~iconip04 email: iconip04 at isical.ac.in address: Conference Secretariat, ICONIP 2004 Electronics & Communication Sciences Unit Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road Calcutta 700 108, INDIA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Nik Kasabov, Program Chair (nkasabov at aut.ac.nz) Prof. Nikhil Pal, General Chair (nikhil at isical.ac.in) From ckello at gmu.edu Thu Mar 11 13:09:28 2004 From: ckello at gmu.edu (Christopher Kello) Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 13:09:28 -0500 Subject: preprint available: neural network models of the articulatory-acoustic forward mapping Message-ID: <002a01c40793$fe4a5dd0$3a94ae81@bak> The following paper may be of interest to some connectionists. It can be downloaded at http://archlab.gmu.edu/cogdyn/publications Regards, Christopher Kello Department of Psychology 3F5 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 Kello, C. T., & Plaut, D. C. (in press). A neural network model of the articulatory-acoustic forward mapping trained on recordings of articulatory parameters. To appear in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Abstract Three neural network models were trained on the forward mapping from articulatory positions to acoustic outputs for a single speaker of the Edinburgh multi-channel articulatory speech database. The model parameters (i.e., connection weights) were learned via the backpropagation of error signals generated by the difference between acoustic outputs of the models, and their acoustic targets. Efficacy of the trained models was assessed by subjecting the models' acoustic outputs to speech intelligibility tests. The results of these tests showed that enough phonetic information was captured by the models to support rates of word identification as high as 84%, approaching an identification rate of 92% for the actual target stimuli. These forward models could serve as one component of a data-driven articulatory synthesizer. The models also provide the first step toward building a model of spoken word acquisition and phonological development trained on real speech. From nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz Thu Mar 11 23:21:28 2004 From: nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz (Nik Kasabov) Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:21:28 +1300 Subject: A new deadline for the ICONIP'04 submissions Message-ID: Many requests have been sent for an extension of the deadline for the ICONIP'04 submissions, which now is 15 April 2004. The 10th International Conference on Neuro-Information Processing ICONIP'2004, sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly APNNA, will be held in Calcutta, India, 21-25 November 2004. Paper submissions are encouraged to the following tracks: Brain-like computing Computational neuro- science Neuroinformatics Neural network hardware Cognitive science Learning algorithms Evolutionary computation Quantum computing Bayesian computing Novel neural network architectures Support vector machines and kernel methods Fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy and other hybrid systems Brain study models Bio-informatics Pattern recognition Time series prediction and data analysis Image processing and vision Speech and signal processing Key Dates: Papers Submission: April 15, 2004 Tutorial / Special Session Proposals: June 30, 2004 Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2004 Camera-Ready Copy Due: August 30, 2004 Early Registration: September 15, 2004 Further Details: WWW site: http://www.isical.ac.in/~iconip04 email: iconip04 at isical.ac.in address: Conference Secretariat, ICONIP 2004 Electronics & Communication Sciences Unit Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road Calcutta 700 108, INDIA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Nikola Kasabov, Program Chair (nkasabov at aut.ac.nz) Prof. Nikhil Pal, General Chair (nikhil at isical.ac.in) From vittorio.sanguineti at unige.it Fri Mar 12 11:25:56 2004 From: vittorio.sanguineti at unige.it (Vittorio Sanguineti) Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:25:56 +0100 Subject: 1st Announcement: 2nd European School of Neuroengineering "M. Grattarola" Message-ID: <4051E494.2020103@unige.it> First Announcement *********************************************************************** 2nd EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF NEUROENGINEERING "MASSIMO GRATTAROLA" nEUro.IT Telecom Italia Learning Services University of Genova GENOVA (ITALY), 9-12 JUNE 2004 *********************************************************************** PROGRAM CHAIRS: V. Sanguineti (I), S. Martinoia (I), A.K. Engel (D) WEBSITES: www.tils.com/neurobit www.bio.dibe.unige.it/news_and_events/news_and_events_frames.htm/ The school, named after Massimo Grattarola who initiated the series in 2000, will be held From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Mar 12 08:23:22 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 13:23:22 -0000 Subject: Professorship position Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C023F4D05@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From wahba at cs.wisc.edu Mon Mar 15 20:12:17 2004 From: wahba at cs.wisc.edu (Grace Wahba) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 19:12:17 -0600 (CST) Subject: ASSIST code-statistical model building-kernels Message-ID: <200403160112.TAA02559@juno.stat.wisc.edu> I have received the following announcement regarding ASSIST, a collection of R functions which may be of interest to some members of this list. From yuedong at pstat.ucsb.edu Mon Mar 15 14:46:52 2004 From: yuedong at pstat.ucsb.edu (Yuedong Wang) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 11:46:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: Announcing ASSIST Message-ID: We have put together a package ASSIST, a collection of R functions for fitting many spline-based non-parametric/semi-parametric linear/non-linear fixed/mixed models. The general form of smoothing splines based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces is used to model nonparametric functions. Some well known special cases include polynomial, periodic, spherical, thin-plate splines and L splines as well as smoothing spline ANOVA models. It also covers some cases of generalized additive models, multiple index models, varying coefficient models, functional linear models, and self-modeling nonlinear regression models. Users may also provide their own kernels. The package contains five main R functions: 1. ssr fits non-parametric regression models for independent and correlated Gaussian data, and for independent binomial, Poisson and Gamma data; 2. slm fits semi-parametric linear mixed-effects models; 3. nnr fits non-parametric nonlinear regression models; 4. snr fits semi-parametric nonlinear regression models; 5. snm fits semi-parametric nonlinear mixed-effects models. These extend such existing functions in R (S+) as smooth.spline, gam, nls, lme and nlme. The current version can deal with small to moderate data sets only. We are working on options to deal with large data sets. ASSIST may be obtained at CRAN http://cran.us.r-project.org/ or http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/faculty/yuedong/software Detailed information about these functions and many examples can be found in the manual of this package, which again can be downloaded from the above site. Comments and suggestions are highly appreciated! Yuedong Wang and Chunlei Ke From terry at salk.edu Mon Mar 15 23:50:41 2004 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:50:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 16:4 In-Reply-To: <200402031804.i13I4rE81136@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: <200403160450.i2G4ofc88310@purkinje.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 16, Number 4 - April 1, 2004 NOTE The Shape of Neural Dependence Rick L. Jenison and Richard A. Reale LETTERS On the Phase Reduction and Response Dynamics of Neural Oscillator Populations Eric Brown, Jeff Moehlis and Philip Holmes Estimating the Entropy Rate of Spike Trains via Lempel-Ziv Complexity Jose M. Amigo, Janusz Szczepanski, Elek Wajnryb, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives Investigation on Possible Neural Architectures Underlying Information- Geometric Measures Masami Tatsuno and Masato Okada Robustifying AdaBoost by Adding the Naive Error Rate Takashi Takenouchi and Shinto Eguchi Boosting with Noisy Data: Some Views from Statistical Theory Wenxin Jiang Different Paradigms for Choosing Sequential Reweighting Algorithms Gilles Blanchard Robust Formulations for Training Multilayer Perceptrons Tommi Karkkainen and Erkki Heikkola An Extended Projection Neural Network for Constrained Optimization Youshen Xia ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2004 - VOLUME 16 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $108 $54 $57.78 Individual $95 $101.65 $143 $85 $90.95 Institution $635 $679.45 $689 $572 $612.04 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From school at cogs.nbu.bg Tue Mar 16 09:31:54 2004 From: school at cogs.nbu.bg (SCHOOL) Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 16:31:54 +0200 Subject: Summer School in Cognitive Science 2004, NBU Message-ID: 11th INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Sofia, New Bulgarian University, July 4 24, 2004 Courses: I week: July 5-11 - Edward Necka (U. Cracow, Poland) Creativity - Franz Schmalhofer (U. Osnabrueck, Germany) Situation Models and Embodied Language Processes - George Kampis (U. Budapest, Hungary) Deconstructing the Mind: Anti-Cartesian Perspective on Cognition II week: July 12-18 - Charles De Weert and Rob van Lier (U. Nijmegen, Netherlands) Color and Form in Visual Perception - Myron Braunstein (UC Irvine, USA) Visual Perception of the 3D World - Boicho Kokinov (NBU, Bulgaria) Understanding Human Analogy-Making III week: July 19 - 24 - Jeffrey Elman (UC, San Diego, USA) Connectionist Models of Learning and Development - Fernanda Ferreira (Michigan State U, USA) Psycholinguistics: Language as a product and as an action - Richard Belew (UC, San Diego, USA) Adaptive Individuals in Evolving Populations: Combining Evolutionary Modeling with Learning and Development Models In addition, panel discussions, participant symposia, and project work will take place. Organised by the New Bulgarian University Endorsed by the Cognitive Science Society Sponsored by the European Commission (EUROCOG project) For more information look at: http://www.nbu.bg/cogs/events/ss2004.htm Central and East European Center for Cognitive Science New Bulgarian University 21 Montevideo Str. Sofia 1635 phone: (+3592) 8110-403 e-mail: school at cogs.nbu.bg ________________________________ New Bulgarian University http://mail.nbu.bg From terry at salk.edu Mon Mar 15 23:50:41 2004 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:50:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 16:4 In-Reply-To: <200402031804.i13I4rE81136@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: <200403160450.i2G4ofc88310@purkinje.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 16, Number 4 - April 1, 2004 NOTE The Shape of Neural Dependence Rick L. Jenison and Richard A. Reale LETTERS On the Phase Reduction and Response Dynamics of Neural Oscillator Populations Eric Brown, Jeff Moehlis and Philip Holmes Estimating the Entropy Rate of Spike Trains via Lempel-Ziv Complexity Jose M. Amigo, Janusz Szczepanski, Elek Wajnryb, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives Investigation on Possible Neural Architectures Underlying Information- Geometric Measures Masami Tatsuno and Masato Okada Robustifying AdaBoost by Adding the Naive Error Rate Takashi Takenouchi and Shinto Eguchi Boosting with Noisy Data: Some Views from Statistical Theory Wenxin Jiang Different Paradigms for Choosing Sequential Reweighting Algorithms Gilles Blanchard Robust Formulations for Training Multilayer Perceptrons Tommi Karkkainen and Erkki Heikkola An Extended Projection Neural Network for Constrained Optimization Youshen Xia ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2004 - VOLUME 16 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $108 $54 $57.78 Individual $95 $101.65 $143 $85 $90.95 Institution $635 $679.45 $689 $572 $612.04 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From movellan at mplab.ucsd.edu Tue Mar 16 22:04:35 2004 From: movellan at mplab.ucsd.edu (Javier R. Movellan) Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:04:35 -0800 Subject: Kolmogorov Open Source Project Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 749 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/1c435bf2/attachment.bin From schunn+ at pitt.edu Wed Mar 17 10:07:31 2004 From: schunn+ at pitt.edu (Christian Schunn) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 10:07:31 -0500 Subject: upcoming ICCM2004 submission deadline Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 5748 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/4065948b/attachment.bin From nestor.parga at uam.es Wed Mar 17 13:27:45 2004 From: nestor.parga at uam.es (Nestor Parga) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 19:27:45 +0100 Subject: Sabbatical and post-doctoral positions Message-ID: <405898A1.3070403@uam.es> Computational and Systems Neuroscience - Dept of Theoretical Physics, Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid - Interested candidates are invited to apply for a sabbatical or a post-doctoral position for research work in Computational and Systems Neuroscience at the "Group of Computational Neuroscience", Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid, Spain. These positions are funded by the Spanish Ministery of Education (MECD). The program contains two modalities: sabbatical and post-docs. Both are for non-spanish researchers (or spanish with residence outside Spain). Eligible candidates should have a Ph. D. in scientific disciplines such as Neuroscience, Physics, Maths or Computer Science). Candidates for a sabbatical position are required to have obtained their PhD before Jan 1998, and to possess a good experience in research work on Computational Neuroscience. The duration of the stay for sabbatical positions is from 3 to 12 months. Post-docs should have obtained their PhD after Jan 1998. The duration of the stay for post-docs is from 9 to 18 months. More information about these positions can be found at the MECD's web address: http://www.univ.mecd.es/univ/jsp/plantillaAncho.jsp?id=14 The position should start between Sept 1st, 2004 and March 1st 2005. The final choice among the candidates - supported by research groups in Spain - will be made by the MECD. Candidates are expected to work in interaction with the theoretical team of the Computational Neuroscience group to carry out joint work on information processing in the brain Details about the current work of the group can be found at the web site: http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/ Interested candidates are encouraged to send a description of their research interests and their curriculum vitae, including a list of all publications to the address below. Candidates for the post-doctoral position should include the names of three scientists who could send recommendation letters. The deadline for applications is March 23, 2004. Contact person: N?stor Parga -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- | Nestor Parga | | | | Phone : (+34) 91-497-4542 | | Dpto. de Fisica Teorica, C-XI | Fax : (+34) 91-497-3936 | | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid | E-mail: nestor.parga at uam.es | | 28049 Madrid, SPAIN | | | | | http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/nestor | ------------------------------------------------------------------- From bogus@does.not.exist.com Tue Mar 16 10:54:00 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:54:00 -0000 Subject: 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW 9) Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C024544CD@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From mr287 at georgetown.edu Wed Mar 17 14:17:34 2004 From: mr287 at georgetown.edu (Maximilian Riesenhuber) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:17:34 -0500 Subject: postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience/fMRI, Georgetown University Message-ID: <4058A44E.2010502@georgetown.edu> Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience and fMRI Lab for Neural Information Processing Department of Neuroscience Georgetown University A postdoctoral position is available immediately in the lab of Max Riesenhuber at Georgetown University to study the neural mechanisms underlying real world object recognition (in particular object recognition in cluttered scenes and the role of attention in object recognition) using a combination of computational modeling, psychophysics, and fMRI. The project is part of an NIH-funded collaboration between the Riesenhuber lab at Georgetown and labs at MIT, Caltech and Northwestern. Candidates should have a research record in a vision-related field, a strong quantitative background and experience in two of the following: computational neuroscience, visual psychophysics, fMRI. Initial appointment will be for a two-year period, with the possibility of extension for another year. Salary is based on experience and conforms to NIH levels. The lab investigates the computational mechanisms underlying human perception as a gateway to understanding information processing and learning in cortex. In our work, we combine computational models with psychophysical and fMRI data from our own lab and collaborators, as well as with single unit data obtained in collaboration with physiology labs. We also collaborate with machine vision groups to compare the performance of our model of object recognition in cortex to current machine vision systems on real-world vision tasks. For more information, see http://riesenhuberlab.neuro.georgetown.edu, or email Max Riesenhuber at mr287 at georgetown.edu. Georgetown University has a strong neuroscience community with fifty labs involved in the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. Its scenic campus overlooks the Potomac River in Washington, DC, one of the most intellectual and culturally rich cities in the country. Interested candidates should send a CV, representative reprints, and the names and contact information of three references to Maximilian Riesenhuber (mr287 at georgetown.edu). Review of applications will begin immmediately, and will continue until the position is filled. ********************************************************************** Maximilian Riesenhuber phone: 202-687-9198 Department of Neuroscience fax: 202-784-3562 Georgetown University Medical Center email: mr287 at georgetown.edu Research Building Room EP09 3970 Reservoir Rd., NW Washington, DC 20007 http://riesenhuberlab.neuro.georgetown.edu ********************************************************************** From cindy at bu.edu Thu Mar 18 15:38:29 2004 From: cindy at bu.edu (Cynthia Bradford) Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 15:38:29 -0500 Subject: Neural Networks 17(3) Message-ID: <008001c40d28$f90c43c0$903dc580@cnspc31> NEURAL NETWORKS 17(3) Contents - Volume 17, Number 3 - 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------ INVITED ARTICLE Reinforcement learning with via-point representation Hiroyuki Miyamoto, Jun Morimoto, Kenji Doya, and Mitsuo Kawato NEURAL NETWORKS LETTER Self-organized two-state membrane potential transitions in a network of realistically modeled cortical neurons Siu Kang, Katsunori Kitano, and Tomoki Fukai CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES ***** Psychology and Cognitive Science ***** A robust method for distinguishing between learned and spurious attractors Anthony V. Robins and Simon J.R. McCallum ***** Neuroscience and Neuropsychology ***** Investigation of color constancy with a neural network Rytis Stanikunas, Henrikas Vaitkevicius, and Janus J. Kulikowski ***** Mathematical and Computational Analysis ***** Models of MT and MST areas using wake-sleep algorithm Katsuki Katayama, Masataka Ando, and Tsuyoshi Horiguchi A via-point time optimization algorithm for complex sequential trajectory formation Yasuhiro Wada and Mitsuo Kawato Marginal median SOM for document organization and retrieval A. Georgakis, C. Kotropoulos, A. Xafopoulos, and I. Pitas Absolute exponential stability of recurrent neural networks with Lipschitz-continuous activation functions and time delays Jinde Cao and Jun Wang Absolutely exponential stability of a class of neural networks with unbounded delay Jiye Zhang, Yoshihiro Suda, and Takashi Iwasa Twinned principal curves Jos Koetsier, Ying Han, and Colin Fyfe ***** Engineering and Design ***** Massively parallel networks for edge localization and contour integration: Adaptable relaxation approach Toshiro Kubota A neural network controller for hydronic heating systems of solar buildings Athanassios A. Argiriou, Ioannis Bellas-Velidis, Michael Kummert, and Philippe Andre ***** Technology and Applications ***** A high performance k-NN approach using binary neural networks Victoria J. Hodge, Ken J. Lees, and James L. Austin ***** Book Reviews ***** "Foundations of Wavelet Networks and Applications" authored by S. Sitharama Iyengar, E.C. Cho, and Vir V. Phoho and reviewed by Gokhan Bakir "Neural Engineering: Computation, Representation and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems" authored by Chris Eliasmith and Charles Anderson and reviewed by Michael G. Paulin CURRENT EVENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Electronic access: www.elsevier.com/locate/neunet/. Individuals can look up instructions, aims & scope, see news, tables of contents, etc. Those who are at institutions which subscribe to Neural Networks get access to full article text as part of the institutional subscription. 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Box 408 531 28 Skovde Sweden 46 500 44 83 37 (phone) 46 500 44 83 99 (fax) enns at ida.his.se http://www.his.se/ida/enns JNNS Membership c/o Professor Shozo Yasui Kyushu Institute of Technology Graduate School of Life Science and Engineering 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu-ku Kitakyushu 808-0196 Japan 81 93 695 6108 (phone and fax) jnns at brain.kyutech.ac.jp http://www.jnns.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From poznan at iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu Wed Mar 17 17:29:18 2004 From: poznan at iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu (ROMAN POZNANSKI) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:29:18 -0500 Subject: J. Integr. Neurosci., Vol.3, No.1 April 2004 Message-ID: <4058D13E.2010302@iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu> JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE Volume 3, Issue 1, April 2004 Copyright ? 2004 Imperial College Press. All rights reserved. Editorial 1 G.A. Chauvet Short Communications Is It Possible to Restore Function with Two Percent Surviving Neural Tissue? 3 P. Bach-Y-Rita The Role of Volume Transmission in an Endogenous Brain S. W. Kercel Research Reports Concept Formation: 'Object' Attributes Dynamically Inhibited from Conscious Awareness 19 A. Snyder, T. Bossomaier and D. J. Mitchell Early Integrative Cognitive Development in Human Infants 35 M. Molina, M. Barbu-Roth and F. Jouen The Endogenous Brain 47 S. W. Kercel Modeling Discoordination of Cortical Neuroactivity: Relevance for the Executive Control of Attention in Alzheimer's Disease 73 M. Moutoussis, M. W. Orrell and R. Morris Investigating human color preferences in the perception of complex three-dimensional Structures 93 L. B. Coelho, M.C. Ferreira de Oliveira, and L. Da Fontoura Costa Book Review Computational Neuroscience: A Comprehensive Approach by JianFeng Feng R.R.Poznanski 123 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For orders within Europe, please contact the Imperial College Press sales department at: Tel: +44 (0)20 7836-0888 Fax: +44 (0)20 7836-2020 during U.K. business hours. Outside Europe, our books and journals are distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, SINGAPORE 596224 Fax: 65-6467-7667 Tel: 65-6466-5775 E-mail: wspc at wspc.com.sg Price Information: ISSN: 0219-6352 ; Vol. 3/2004; 4 Issues Special Rates: Individuals From chiba at Cogsci.ucsd.edu Sat Mar 20 05:18:17 2004 From: chiba at Cogsci.ucsd.edu (Andrea Chiba) Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 02:18:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: ICDL 2004 Call For Papers Message-ID: ICDL 2004 FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSION DEADLINE: May 5 2004. THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING: DEVELOPING SOCIAL BRAINS The Salk Institute October 20-22, 2004 San Diego, California http://icdl.cc The goal of the conference is to bring together leading researchers in neuroscience, machine learning, robotics, and developmental psychology, in order to gain new insights about learning and development in natural organisms and robots. The scope of developmental processes to be considered is broad, including cognitive, social, emotional, and many other skills exhibited by humans, and other animals. The theme of the conference this year will be "Developing Social Brains", but other topics related to development and learning are welcome. PAPER SUBMISSION Submission deadline is May 5 2004. Papers for the meeting can be submitted ONLY through the conference's web site at: http://icdl.cc. Papers can be submitted either as a 200 word summary or as a full paper (max 8 typeset pages). SPECIAL ISSUE ON NEUROCOMPUTING Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper for publication in a special issue of the Neurocomputing Journal, published by Elsevier Science B.V. (http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/neucom) INVITED TALKS (To be confirmed) Jeff Elman John Allman Eric Courchesne Terrence Sejnowski Joan Stiles James L. McClelland John Watson Dana Ballard Pietro Perona Rodney Brooks REVIEW PROCESS All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee. Papers will be judged and accepted for the meeting based on the clarity with which the work is described and the relevance to the goals of the conference. All accepted papers not selected for oral talks as well as papers explicitly submitted as poster presentations will be included in one of three evening poster sessions. Authors will be notified of the presentation format of their papers by the beginning of July. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chair: Javier R. Movellan: Co-Chairs: Andrea Chiba, Gedeon Deak, Jochen Triesch. Program Chair: Jochen Triesch. Program Co-Chairs: Marian Stewart-Bartlett, Gwen Ford Littlewort. Publications Chair: Gedeon Deak. ADVISORY BOARD: Jeff Elman James L. McClelland Sandy Pentland Terrence Sejnowski Mriganka Sur Esther Thelen Juyang Weng PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Minoru Asada Dana Ballard Luis Baumela Mark Baxter Jeff Cohn Kerstin Dautenhahn Risto Miikulainen Martha Farah Masahiro Fujita William Greenough Michael Hasselmo Shoji Itakura Hiroshi Ishiguro Robert Jacobs David Kleinfeld Mark Konishi Denis Mareshal Douglas Nitz Roz Picard Matthew Schlesinger Gregor Schoener Geoffrey Schoenbaum Linda Smith Olaf Sporns Luc Steels Manuela Veloso Paul Verschure Christoph von der Malsburg Hiroyuki Yano From kechen at bme.jhu.edu Sun Mar 21 12:22:00 2004 From: kechen at bme.jhu.edu (Kechen Zhang) Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 12:22:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: Postdoc Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Postdoc Position in Computational Neuroscience A postdoctoral research position in computational neuroscience is available immediately at Johns Hopkins University. An ideal candidate should have solid mathematical background and strong interest in brain theories. Depending on the preparation and the research interest of the candidate, projects in close collaboration with local experimental labs are possible. Please send inquiries and all communications to Kechen Zhang. Application for this position should include a CV, representative papers or writings, and a cover letter with the contact information of three references. Dr. Kechen Zhang Department of Biomedical Engineering Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 720 Rutland Avenue - Traylor Building 407 Baltimore, Maryland 21205 Email: kechen at bme.jhu.edu Phone: 410-955-3538 FAX: 443-287-5080 website: http://www.bme.jhu.edu//labs/kechen/ From saadd at aston.ac.uk Tue Mar 23 11:55:29 2004 From: saadd at aston.ac.uk (D SAAD) Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:55:29 +0000 Subject: Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Aston University Message-ID: <40606C01.9050407@aston.ac.uk> Aston University School of Engineering & Applied Science Neural Computing Research Group Research Fellow (2 Posts) Ref No. R04/68/98 We are looking for highly motivated individuals for two postdoctoral research positions in the general areas of coding and computational complexity. The emphasis of this research will be on applying theoretical and numerical methods from statistical physics to study various properties of multi-user communication systems, distributed computing/communication and related hard computational problems. This research activity is part of a European FP-6 consortium (EVERGROW). Applicants should have excellent mathematical and computational skills, and one or more of the following: a background in statistical physics, information theory and computational complexity. The positions will be offered for 12 months in the first instance with a possible extension beyond this period. Further details on the research project can be found on http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk Informal enquiries should be directed to David Saad : D.Saad at aston.ac.uk Further Particulars and Application forms are available on http://www.aston.ac.uk/hr/R0468%20advert.htm or from Personnel Services, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK by telephoning: 0121 359 0870 (24 hour answerphone), or by email: b.a.power at aston.ac.uk , quoting the reference number. Closing date for applications: 9 April 2004 From bengio at idiap.ch Tue Mar 23 09:50:50 2004 From: bengio at idiap.ch (Samy Bengio) Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:50:50 +0100 (CET) Subject: workshop announcement Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to announce the following Workshop: JOINT AMI/PASCAL/IM2/M4 Workshop on Multimodal Interaction and Related Machine Learning Algorithms http://www.idiap.ch/events/workshop-mlmi04/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where: Centre du Parc (http://www.hotelduparc.ch/), Martigny, Switzerland When: 21-23 June 2004 Deadline for paper submission: 22 April 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the framework of this workshop, participants are invited to submit full papers for oral or poster presentation in the following areas of interest: + human-human communication modeling + speech and visual processing + multi-modal processing, fusion and fission + multi-modal dialog modeling + human-human interaction modeling + multi-modal data structuring and presentation + multimedia indexing and retrieval + meeting structure analysis + meeting summarizing + multimodal meeting annotation + machine learning applied to the above ========================= The workshop is organized jointly by 4 European and Swiss National projects: AMI (Augmented Multiparty Interaction, http://www.amiproject.org) is a newly launched (January 2004) European Integrated Project (IP) funded under Framework FP6 as part of its IST program. AMI targets computer enhanced multi-modal interaction in the context of meetings. The project aims at substantially advancing the state-of-the-art, within important underpinning technologies (such as human-human communication modeling, speech recognition, computer vision, multimedia indexing and retrieval). It will also produce tools for off-line and on-line browsing of multi-modal meeting data, including meeting structure analysis and summarizing functions. The project also makes recorded and annotated multimodal meeting data widely available for the European research community, thereby contributing to the research infrastructure in the field. PASCAL (Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning, http:///www.pascal-network.org) is a newly lauched (December 2003) European Network of Excellence (NoE) as part of its IST program. The NoE brings together experts from basic research areas such as Statistics, Optimisation and Computational Learning and from a number of application areas, with the objective of integrating research agendas and improving the state of the art in all concerned fields. IM2 (Interactive Multimodal Information Management, http://www.im2.ch) is a Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) aiming at the advancement of research, and the development of prototypes, in the field of man-machine interaction. IM2 is particularly concerned with technologies coordinating natural input modes (such as speech, image, pen, touch, hand gestures, head and/or body movements, and even physiological sensors) with multimedia system outputs, such as speech, sounds, images, 3D graphics and animation. Among other application, IM2 is also targeting research and development in the context of smart meeting rooms. M4 (Multi-Modal Meeting Manager, http://www.m4project.org) is a EU IST project launched in March 2002 concerned with the construction of a demonstration system to enable structuring, browsing and querying of an archive of automatically analysed meetings. The archived meetings will have taken place in a room equipped with multimodal sensors. ========================= General Chairs : Samy Bengio, IDIAP Herve Bourlard, IDIAP Programme Committee : Jean Carletta, University of Edinburg Phil Green, Univ. Sheffield Jan Larson, Technical University of Denmark Nelson Morgan, ICSI/Berkeley Erkki Oja, Helsinky University of Technology Barbara Peskin, ICSI Berkeley Thierry Pun, University of Geneva Steve Renals, University of Edinburg John Shawe-Taylor, University of Southampton Steve Whittaker, University of Sheffield ========================= Current list of invited speakers: Bill Buxton, Buxton Design Yorick Wilks, Sheffield University Jonathan Foote, FX Palo Alto Laboratory Prof Stephen Cox, University of East Anglia Prof Roddy Cowie, Queen's University, Belfast Jordy Cohen, VoiceSignal David Nahamoo, IBM Research ---- Samy Bengio Senior Researcher in Machine Learning. IDIAP, CP 592, rue du Simplon 4, 1920 Martigny, Switzerland. tel: +41 27 721 77 39, fax: +41 27 721 77 12. mailto:bengio at idiap.ch, http://www.idiap.ch/~bengio From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Mar 25 12:58:57 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 18:58:57 +0100 Subject: 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop: Call for Abstracts Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C024544CF@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From schunn+ at pitt.edu Wed Mar 31 13:24:07 2004 From: schunn+ at pitt.edu (Christian Schunn) Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 13:24:07 -0500 Subject: ICCM2004 submission deadline extension Message-ID: International Conference on Cognitive Modeling July 30 to August 1, 2004 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Tutorials and Doctoral Consortium, July 29) Because of some confusion on the deadline and many who appear to need a few extra days, we have decided to extend the paper and symposia submission deadlines for ICCM2004 to April 7th, 2004. So, to list all the deadlines as they stand now: Papers + Symposia: April 7, 23:59 EDST Poster-abstracts: June 15, 23:59 EDST Doctoral Consortium submissions: April 1, 23:59 EDST For further information about ICCM2004 and submission instructions, see http://simon.lrdc.pitt.edu/~iccm/ CONFERENCE CHAIRS Marsha Lovett (lovett at cmu.edu) Christian Schunn (schunn at pitt.edu) Christian Lebiere (clebiere at maad.com) Paul Munro (pmunro at mail.sis.pitt.edu) From b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue Mar 30 10:28:37 2004 From: b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk (Bruce Philip Graham) Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:28:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: Edinburgh Summer School in Neuroinformatics Simulation Tools Message-ID: <2733.139.153.254.219.1080660517.squirrel@yen.cs.stir.ac.uk> 2004 EDINBURGH SUMMER SCHOOL IN NEUROINFORMATICS SIMULATION TOOLS Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation University of Edinburgh. August 23-27, 2004 * Application deadline: 4th June 2004 * This summer school in Neuroinformatics Simulation Tools is a five day intensive course which will provide a practical introduction to using neuroscience simulation tools including NEURON and Catacomb for computational modelling of neural systems. The course will be held at the e-Science Institute in the centre of Edinburgh and will include talks from invited speakers as well as practical hands-on experience using the latest simulation tools. The course is aimed at PhD students, postdocs and faculty in neuroscience and related disciplines wishing to learn how to apply computational modelling techniques to their research problems. Bursaries are available for PhD students to help with travel and accommodation costs. For more details, and an online application form visit:- http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/school -- Dr Bruce Graham, Lecturer (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk) Dept. of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA phone: +44 1786 467 432 fax: +44 1786 464 551 -- The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA. Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. From psimen at Math.Princeton.EDU Mon Mar 1 18:59:05 2004 From: psimen at Math.Princeton.EDU (Patrick Simen) Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 18:59:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: PhD thesis available: Neural mechanisms for control in complex cognition Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, My PhD thesis, 'Neural mechanisms for control in complex cognition', is now available at http://www.math.princeton.edu/~psimen/SimenThesis.pdf. The abstract and table of contents are presented below. I hope it will be of interest to you! --Patrick Simen ABSTRACT Neural network models of complex cognitive tasks are difficult to build. Most previous work has focused on the difficulty of using structured symbolic representations in neural networks. This thesis focuses on the problem of control. During problem solving, some form of control is necessary for sequencing operations, for selecting actions, and for manipulating goal representations. I present a set of control mechanisms inspired and constrained by brain organization that are powerful enough to guarantee basic problem solving ability; in fact, I show that they are computationally universal. These mechanisms exploit a simple method for controlling the temporal characteristics of activation in continuous-time neural networks that makes neural control of complex processes possible in properly organized neural cognitive models. The basic computational primitive is inspired by corticostriatal loops in which the cortical component is composed of columns organized in layers. An input layer and an output layer each form winner-take-all networks. These layers are connected via a corticostriatal loop that produces a controllable amount of internal propagation delay in signal transmission from input layer to output layer. Modules can be composed hierarchically to produce goal-directed control circuits for cognitive models that are formally equivalent to finite automata and share many properties of symbolic production systems. These control circuits are instantiated in a neural cognitive model of the Tower of London problem-solving task. The model implements the assumption that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is preferentially involved in representing subgoal information during problem solving, and that frontostriatal loop circuits provide a timing function that is critical for proper problem solving performance. Normal subject performance is accurately simulated by the model, and performance under conditions of simulated prefrontal lesions and Parkinson's disease captures speed and accuracy impairments exhibited in patient data from the literature. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Computational models of control 1.1 Objective 1.2 Defining control 1.2.1 Control systems theory 1.2.2 Control in formal computational systems 1.2.3 Control in the brain 1.3 Cognitive architectures based on production systems 1.3.1 Working memory, goals and productions 1.3.2 Conflict and resolution 1.3.3 Learning 1.3.4 Distributed control 1.4 Existing neural models of control and symbolic processing 1.4.1 Models of neural symbol processing 1.4.2 Models of control 1.5 A neural cognitive architecture 1.6 Summary 2. Controlling and exploiting the temporal dynamics of neural activation 2.1 Neural activation and positive feedback 2.1.1 The activation function 2.1.2 Self-excitation 2.2 Measuring and encoding duration 2.3 Summary 3. Using control to implement computationally universal neural primitives 3.1 Finite automata and Turing machines 3.1.1 Finite automata as control devices 3.1.2 Turing machines 3.2 Neural finite automata and Turing machines 3.3 Components of continuous-time neural finite automata and Turing machines 3.3.1 Encoding internal state 3.3.2 Representing discrete values 3.3.3 Implementing voltage sources 3.3.4 Implementing simple logic functions 3.3.5 Implementing simple memory devices 3.3.6 Implementing gates and flip-flops 3.3.7 Delay in columnar networks 3.3.8 Clocks 3.4 Implementing finite automata 3.4.1 Maintaining internal state and encoding acceptance 3.4.2 Input formats 3.4.3 Computing the next state 3.5 Neural tape mechanisms 3.6 Summary 4. Using control to implement simplified neural production systems 4.1 Production systems, classifier systems and control 4.2 Defining neural productions 4.2.1 Productions are connections between modules 4.2.2 Productions are atomic and require effective representation 4.2.3 Limitations of the production-connection mapping 4.3 Activation regulation for conflict resolution 4.3.1 Preferences 4.3.2 Safe ramp-up rates in regulators 4.3.3 When voting stops 4.3.4 Combining excitatory and inhibitory regulators 4.4 Goals 4.5 Impasse detection 4.6 Summary 5. A neural model of the Tower of London task 5.1 Basic model structure 5.2 Tower of London model 5.2.1 Sensorimotor backbone 5.2.2 Perceptual reasoning 5.2.3 Move selection and gating 5.2.4 Goals 5.2.5 Subgoals 5.2.6 Implemented algorithm 5.3 Neural convergence detection and subgoal generation 5.4 Performance of the model 5.5 Summary 6. Mapping the computational architecture onto cortex and corticostriatal loop circuits 6.1 Modules map onto cortex 6.1.1 Laminar structure 6.1.2 Columnar structure 6.1.3 Regional mapping 6.2 Column structures map onto corticostriatal loop circuits combined with cortical columns 6.2.1 More detailed circuitry 6.2.2 Cognitive functions and their impairments by disease 6.2.3 Corticostriatal analogues in the column primitive 6.2.4 Discussion 6.3 Activation regulators map onto anterior cingulate cortex 6.4 Summary 7. Simulating the behavior of normal controls, prefrontal patients and Parkinson's patients on the Tower of London task 7.1 Predictions of DLPFC mapping 7.2 Predictions of frontostriatal mapping 7.3 Summary 8. Discussion 8.1 Summary 8.2 Contributions 8.2.1 A focus on control 8.2.2 An hypothesis regarding brain organization and psychological function 8.2.3 A means for temporal coding in neural networks 8.2.4 Demonstrates flexible control through finite automaton and Turing machine emulation 8.2.5 An example of the power of symbolic dynamics 8.2.6 A simple method for the construction of complex neural cognitive models 8.2.7 Mechanisms that use analog quantities for computation 8.2.8 Demonstrates the value of committing to a low-level physical model of neural processing 8.3 Remaining issues 8.3.1 Synaptic modification 8.3.2 The binding problem 8.3.3 More realistic neurons Appendix A. Sequence and duration learning A.1 Introduction A.2 Predictive error driven learning A.3 Computational motivations for laminar structure A.3.1 Asymmetric connection learning in recurrent networks A.3.2 Inhibitors of input and output A.3.3 A synaptic triad mechanism for learning A.3.4 Recruit-driven timing mechanisms for plasticity A.3.5 Recruitment of columns A.4 Learning durations with inhibitory strength modification A.4.1 Preventing propagation during recording A.4.2 The rate of weakening A.4.3 Isolating precision components from fluctuations A.5 Performance of the full sequence learning circuit Appendix B. Glitches and glitch protection Appendix C. Goals and a goal stack mechanism C.1 Properties of goals C.2 Stacking goals C.3 Performance of the goal stack C.4 Incorporating the goal stack mechanism into a column C.5 The goal stack as a tool for cognitive modeling ************************************************************************* Patrick Simen 209 Fine Hall Research Fellow Washington Rd. Center for the Study of Brain, Princeton, NJ 08544-1000 Mind and Behavior Program in Applied and Phone: (609) 258-6155 and Computational Mathematics Fax: (609) 258-1367 Princeton University email: psimen at math.princeton.edu ************************************************************************* From gs at ukim.edu.mk Tue Mar 2 17:22:45 2004 From: gs at ukim.edu.mk (Georgi Stojanov) Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 23:22:45 +0100 Subject: Final CFP: Epigenetic Robotics 2004 - deadline extension Message-ID: <000a01c400a5$69ea67b0$b28395c2@toshibauser> EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 Fourth International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: EPIROB2004 Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems EPIROB2004 http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 August 25-27, 2004 EPIROB2004 Location: LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa EPIROB2004 Genoa, Italy EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004 Extended Submission Deadline: March 21st, 2004 EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004--EPIROB2004 This workshop focuses on combining developmental psychology, neuroscience, biology, and robotics with the goal of understanding the functioning of biological systems. Epigenetic systems, either natural or artificial, share a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. Epigenetic robotics includes the two-fold goal of understanding biological systems by the interdisciplinary integration between neural and engineering sciences and, simultaneously, that of enabling robots and artificial systems to develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for specific environments. To this aim, psychological theory and empirical evidence should be used to inform epigenetic robotic models, and these models should be used as theoretical tools to make experimental predictions in developmental psychology. We encourage the submission from different disciplines such as robotics, artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, biology or neurophysiology, as well as interdisciplinary work bridging the gap between science and engineering. Subject Areas include, but are not limited to: * The role of motivations, emotions, and value systems in development; * The development of: concepts, consciousness and self-awareness, emotion, imitation, intentionality, intersubjectivity, joint attention, learning, motivation, non-verbal and verbal communication, self, sensorimotor schemata, shared meaning and symbolic reference, social learning, social relationships, social understanding ("mind reading", "theory of mind"), value systems; * Interaction between innate structure, ongoing developing structure, and experience; * Related issues in algorithms, robotics, simulated robots, and embodied systems; * Strong AI (true intelligence and autonomy) versus weak AI; * Related issues from human and nonhuman empirical studies. For summaries of the papers from the latest workshops see: Zlatev and Balkenius (2001), Prince (2002), and Berthouze and Prince (2003). Please send any questions to the workshop co-chairs: Giorgio Metta (pasa at dist.unige.it) and Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Sponsors LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy Communications Research Laboratory, Japan Location University of Genoa, Italy Invited Speakers Luciano Fadiga, Dept. of Biomedical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Italy Claes von Hofsten, Dept. of Psychology, University of Upssala, Sweden Jrgen Konczak, Human Sensorimotor Control Lab, University of Minnesota, USA Jacqueline Nadel, CNRS, University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris, France Submissions Papers not exceeding eight (8) pages should be submitted electronically (PDF or Postscript) as attachment files to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Extended abstracts (maximum two pages) can also be submitted, and will be presented as posters (extended abstracts should also be submitted in PDF or Postscript as attachments to Luc Berthouze (Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp). Further instructions to authors will be posted on the workshop web page: http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org Special issues Authors of a selection of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their manuscript to one of two special issues on Epigenetic Robotics to appear in Interaction Studies: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=IS and the Cognitive Systems Research Journal: http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/journal.html. Important Dates March 1st, 2004: Deadline for submission of papers and posters March 21st, 2004: Extended submission deadline April 21st, 2004: Notification of acceptance for papers and posters May 21st, 2004: Deadline for camera ready-papers & posters August 25-27, 2004: Workshop Organizing Committee Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Luc Berthouze (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan) Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy) Christopher G. Prince (Computer Science, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Giulio Sandini (LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy) Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute, SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia) Program Committee Christian Balkenius (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Luc Berthouze (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Aude Billard (Autonomous Systems Laboratory, EPFL, Switzerland) Daniel Bullock (Cognitive & Neural Systems Department, Boston University, USA) Kerstin Dautenhahn (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK) Yiannis Demiris (Intelligent and Interactive Systems, Imperial College, UK) Luciano Fadiga (University of Ferrara, Italy) Peter Grdenfors (Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden) Philippe Gaussier (Universite de Cergy-Pointoise & ENSEA, France) Gyorgy Gergely (Institute for Psychological Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary) Frdric Kaplan (Sony Computer Science Lab Paris, France) Hideki Kozima (Communications Research Laboratory, Japan) Valerie Kuhlmeier (Yale University, Department of Psychology, USA) Max Lungarella (Neuroscience Research Institute, AIST, Japan) Yuval Marom (School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University, Australia) Giorgio Metta (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy) Jacqueline Nadel (CNRS, France) Chrystopher Nehaniv (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire, UK) Rolf Pfeifer (AI Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland) Christopher G. Prince (Computer Science, University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) Deb Roy (Media Laboratory, MIT, USA) Giulio Sandini (LIRA-Lab, Genoa, Italy) Brian Scassellati (Department of Computer Science, Yale University, USA) Stefan Schaal (Computer Science Department, USC, USA) Matthew Schlesinger (Psychology Department, Southern Illinois University, USA) Sylvain Sirois (Department of Psychology, Manchester University, UK) Michael Spratling (School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, UK) Georgi Stojanov (Computer Science Institute, SS Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia) Gert Westermann (Department of psychology, Oxford Brookes University, UK) Tom Ziemke (Department of Computer Science, University of Skovde, Sweden) Publication of Papers & Poster Abstracts Papers and poster abstracts will be published in the proceedings, and archived at CogPrints (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk). REFERENCES Zlatev, J. & Balkenius, C. (2001). Introduction: Why "epigenetic robotics"? Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems (pp. 1-4). Lund University Cognitive Studies, Volume 85. Available at: http://www.lucs.lu.se/Epigenetic-robotics/Papers/Zlatev.Balkenius.2001.p df Prince, C. G. (2002). Introduction: The Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics. In C. G. Prince, Y. Demiris, Y. Marom, H. Kozima, & C. Balkenius (Eds.) Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Cognitive Studies Volume 94. Available at: http://www.cprince.com/PubRes/EpigeneticRobotics2002/Prince-Intro.pdf Weng, J., McClelland, J., Pentland, A., Sporns, O., Stockman, I., Sur, M., & Thelen, E. (2001). Autonomous mental development by robots and animals. Science, 291, 599-600. Available at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/dl/SciencePaper.pdf Berthouze, L. and Prince, C. G. (2003). Introduction: The Third International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics. In C. G. Prince, L. Berthouze, H. Kozima, D. Bullock, G. Stojanov, & C. Balkenius (Eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Cognitive Studies Volume 101. Available at: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cprince/epigenetic-robotics/2003/intro.pdf --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.600 / Virus Database: 381 - Release Date: 28.02.2004 From Pat.Wakefield-Perna at siemens.com Tue Mar 2 14:30:32 2004 From: Pat.Wakefield-Perna at siemens.com (Wakefield-Perna Pat) Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 14:30:32 -0500 Subject: Research Scientist position at Siemens Medical Solutions Message-ID: <6A90CDDDD8379047893F0543F0A47A69D62262@mlvv9mpe.ww005.siemens.net> RESEARCH SCIENTIST Computer-Aided Diagnosis & Therapy Solutions (CAD) Group Siemens Medical Solutions, Malvern, PA The Computer-Aided Diagnosis & Therapy Solutions Group, Siemens Medical Solutions, USA, Inc. is building a world-class R&D team with researchers in machine learning and/or probabilistic inference. We have hired several scientists and continue to grow with multiple, immediate and ongoing, positions for Research Scientists (senior and entry level). Outstanding candidates with the ability to solve challenging medical problems, while continuing to publish in leading journals and conferences will find a stimulating and rewarding career in the CAD Group. In this position, you will conduct leading-edge research in reasoning from incomplete and structured medical patient data, classification of patients/diseases, as well as machine learning fo automatically extracting patterns from large amounts of numeric, imaging, text, and symbolic data, combine imaging, clinical, and textual information, and other related areas. Candidates must have significant research background in machine learning (classification) and/or probabilistic inference, with publications in leading conferences/journals. Ideal candidates will have a Ph.D. in CS/EE/Statistics/Applied Math or an engineering discipline with an inter-disciplinary background in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, and/or statistics, with a proven record in research, innovative thinking, real world problem solving, and fast prototyping. Database and/or medical experience is a plus, but not required. Primary areas of interest include: a) All areas of probabilistic inference, Bayesian methods, temporal reasoning & inference, probabilistic graphical models (e.g., Bayes Nets), decision-making under uncertainty, and statistical learning. b) Classification methods from machine learning and statistics, and/or neural networks. Additional areas of interest include feature extraction, mining large databases, predictive modeling, pattern recognition, text mining, databases, natural language processing, information retrieval, time series analysis and forecasting. (Note: To be considered for this position, you must have a Ph.D., or be graduating fairly soon with a Ph.D. - latest by summer/fall 2004.) Siemens Medical Solutions is located in Malvern, PA. Malvern lies within the Main Line area of the Philadelphia suburbs (with Philly being less than a one hour drive away). We offer a competitive salary and benefits package that reflects our leadership status. For consideration, please click on the link below and apply online. http://careers.peopleclick.com/jobposts/Client40_Siemens/BU1/External/221-10071.htm Please also include a list of publications; recent Ph.D.'s or Ph.D. candidates should also include their thesis abstract. (Kindly indicate how you learned of this job when you reply) Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. From sunny at sunnybains.com Thu Mar 4 09:11:35 2004 From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains) Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 14:11:35 +0000 Subject: Neuromorphic engineering newsletter available online Message-ID: The Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering has funded a new twice-yearly newsletter called The Neuromorphic Engineer that includes short articles about work in the field as well as pieces about books and software. The first issue has recently come out and is now available for download at: http://www.ine-web.org/ Those who would be interested in contributing to future issues should feel free to contact me directly. Best wishes, Sunny Bains Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer From vhafner at ifi.unizh.ch Fri Mar 5 04:20:51 2004 From: vhafner at ifi.unizh.ch (Verena Vanessa Hafner) Date: 5 Mar 2004 10:20:51 +0100 Subject: PhD studentship in robotic models of emotion Message-ID: Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in robotic models of emotion at the University of the West of England, Bristol, in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. Closing Date: 31 March 2004. Informal enquiries can be made to the research supervisor Dr Dylan Evans (http://www.dylan.org.uk E-mail: Dylan.Evans at uwe.ac.uk, phone: +44-177-328-3294). Applications are invited for a PhD studentship to enable the successful applicant pursue research leading to a PhD in the area of robotic models of emotion. The research will be conducted under the supervision of Dr Dylan Evans, Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Autonomous Systems. The successful candidate will conduct research into mechanisms for the recognition of human facial expressions of emotion suitable for incorporation into humanoid robotic platforms, and into mechanisms that would enable humanoid robots to express recognisable emotions. This research will have a strong component of experimentation and testing using commercial and bespoke robotic platforms and suitable methods for quantitative and qualitative analysis of results. The postholder will have access to the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory (http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk), and work as part of the newly established Humanoid Robotics Group. Applicants should hold a first degree, and preferably an MSc, in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline and have some knowledge of and/or experience in biologically-inspired artificial intelligence and robotics, solid experience programming mobile robots, and motivation and ability to work proactively within a multi-disciplinary team. Previous exposure to areas such as adaptive behaviour, affective/cognitive neuroscience, or the psychology of emotion, and motivation and skills in organising academic meetings and research projects would be highly desirable. The position is full-time for a period of three years, with a start date around September/October 2004. Closing Date: 31 March 2004. Informal enquiries can be made to the research supervisor Dr Dylan Evans (http://www.dylan.org.uk E-mail: Dylan.Evans at uwe.ac.uk, phone: +44-177-328-3294). From "Jeffrey Gray" at ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu Fri Mar 5 13:36:34 2004 From: "Jeffrey Gray" at ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu ("Jeffrey Gray"@ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu) Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:36:34 +0000 Subject: Lewis/Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text of the forthcoming BBS target article: Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls at bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis, University of Toronto Abstract: Emotion theorists and neurobiologists have much to share but they lack a common language for doing so. Emotion theorists rely on causal assumptions that are simple, linear, and cognitivist in character, and they emphasize psychological wholes that cannot be explained by the interaction of their constituents. Conversely, neurobiologists focus on the interaction of multiple components, invoking complex, bidirectional causal processes, but they rarely extend their analysis to psychologically meaningful wholes. Dynamic systems principles can provide a bridge between the psychology and neurobiology of emotion: (1) by explaining psychological as well as neural processes in terms of bidirectional causation and emergent part-whole relations, and (2) by grounding a model of self-organizing emotional states in explicit correspondences between psychological and neural events. I first argue that the application of dynamic systems ideas to emotion theory permits a reconceptualization of emotion-appraisal states as self-organizing wholes. These are proposed to emerge from bidirectional causal interactions among perceptual, cognitive, and emotional constituents, and to maintain those interactions through vertical ("circular") causality. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion as well as mechanisms of integration by which they interact. Based on dynamic systems concepts, these mechanisms are identified as nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion-appraisal states with reference to these neural mechanisms. KEYWORDS: appraisal, bidirectional causality, cognition, dynamic systems, emotion, neurobiology, part-whole relations, self-organization FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lewis-01212003/Referees/ ======================================================================= SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Jeffrey Gray - Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs at bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- From mejia at ncifcrf.gov Fri Mar 5 13:49:01 2004 From: mejia at ncifcrf.gov (Raymond Mejia) Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 13:49:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: Gordon Research Conference on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics Message-ID: Gordon Research Conference on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics June 6-11, 2004 Tilton School Tilton, NH http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/theobio.htm A copy of the program is appended (Please Post). Apply using the icon at the bottom of the webpage. Best regards -- Ray Raymond Mej?a E-mail: ray at helix.nih.gov LCE, NHLBI, NIH Tel: (301)496-9972 10 Center Drive, Room B1D400 Fax: 301-402-2389 Bethesda, MD 20892-1061 USA http://mrb.niddk.nih.gov/ray/ ---------------------------------- 2004 GRC on Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics Theoretical Biology & Biomathematics June 6-11, 2004 Tilton School Tilton, NH Chairs: Tim C Elston & Raymond Mejia Vice Chair: Paul C Bressloff SUNDAY 2:00 pm - 9:00 pmArrival and Check-in 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmMotors and Biological Motion Discussion Leader: Ed Pate (Washington State University) Sean Sun (Johns Hopkins University) Roger Cooke (UC, San Francisco) MONDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 8:30 amGroup Photo 9:00 am - 12:30 pmSpatial Components in the Modeling of Ecological Processes Discussion Leader: Graciela Canziani (Universidad del Centro, Tandil) Renato Casagrandi (Politecnico di Milano) Horst Malchow (Universit?t Osnabr?ck) Mike Neubert (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmInnovations in Theoretical Immunology Discussion Leader: Ramit Mehr (Bar-Ilan University) Can Kesmir (Utrecht University) Nigel Burroughs (University of Warwick) 9:30 pmPoster Session TUESDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmNeurobiology of Breathing, Whiskering and Electrolocation Discussion Leader: Paul Bressloff (University of Utah) Christopher Del Negro (College of William and Mary) Andre Longtin (University of Ottawa) Bard Ermentrout (University of Pittsburgh) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmEmergent Species/Diseases and Invasion Discussion Leader: Carlos Castillo-Chavez (Cornell University) Simon Levin (Princeton University) Sally Blower (UCLA) 9:30 pmPoster Session WEDNESDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmSystems Biology Discussion Leader: James Liao(UCLA) Mark Goulian (University of Pennsylvania) Benno Schwikowski (Institute for Systems Biology) Isidore Rigoutsos (IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmModeling transcriptional control in gene regulatory networks Discussion Leader: Jeff Hasty (UCSD) John Reinitz (SUNY) Terry Hwa (UCSD) 9:30 pmPoster Session THURSDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 am - 12:30 pmBiofluids and Biological Gels Discussion Leader: Aaron Fogelson (University of Utah) Jim Keener (University of Utah) Robert Guy (University of Utah) Kasia Rejniak (Mathematical Biosciences Institute) 12:30 pmLunch 6:00 pmDinner 7:30 pm - 9:30 pmThe Future of Biomathematics and Theoretical Biology Discussion Leader: Alan Hastings(UC Davis) Lee Segel (Weizmann Institute of Science) Kim Cuddington (Ohio University) 9:30 pmPoster Session FRIDAY 7:30 am - 8:30 amBreakfast 9:00 amDepart http://www.grc.uri.edu/programs/2004/theobio.htm From nestor.parga at uam.es Tue Mar 9 11:59:05 2004 From: nestor.parga at uam.es (Nestor Parga) Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 17:59:05 +0100 Subject: Post-doct in Computational Neuroscience - Madrid Message-ID: <404DF7D9.9080104@uam.es> POST-DOCTORAL POSITION - 2004 (Program "Juan de la Cierva") Computational and Systems Neuroscience - a three year position in Madrid - Interested candidates are invited to apply for a post-doctoral position for research work in Computational and Systems Neuroscience at the "Group of Computational Neuroscience", Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain. These are three year positions funded by the Spanish Ministery of Science and Technology (MCYT) within a program known as "Juan de la Cierva". More information about this program can be found at the MCYT's web site: http://www.mcyt.es/CAJAL/default.htm The position would start before the end of this year 2004. All nationalities are eligible, although less than 3 years of postdoctoral experience is required. The final choice among the candidates - supported by research groups in Spain - will be made by the MCYT. Eligible candidates should have a Ph. D. in scientific disciplines such as neuroscience, physics, maths or computer science and possess a good background and interest in theoretical neurobiology. Candidates are expected to work in interaction with the theoretical team of the Computational Neuroscience group to carry out joint work on information processing in the brain Details about the current work of the group can be found at the web site: http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/ Interested candidates are encouraged to send a description of their research interests, their curriculum vitae, a list of all publications and the names of three scientists who could send recommendation letters to the address below, Deadline: March 16, 2004 (the absolute deadline, fixed by the MCYT, is March 22) Contact person: N?stor Parga Address: Dr. N?stor Parga Departamento de F?sica Te?rica Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid 28049 Madrid Spain E-mail : nestor.parga at uam.es http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/nestor/index.html From calls at bbsonline.org Wed Mar 10 14:59:58 2004 From: calls at bbsonline.org (Behavioral & Brain Sciences) Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 19:59:58 +0000 Subject: Lewis/Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology: BBS Call for Commentators Message-ID: Below please find the abstract, keywords, and a link to the full text of the forthcoming BBS target article: Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or suggested by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within three (3) weeks to: calls at bbsonline.org The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment. If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list of current BBS Associates is available at this location to help you select a name: http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into our database as an unaffiliated investigator.) To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, it would be most helpful if you would send us an indication of the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper, and what aspect of the paper you would anticipate commenting upon. Please DO NOT prepare a commentary until you receive a formal invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and frequency of prior commentaries in BBS. ======================================================================= ======================================================================= Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic system modeling Marc D. Lewis, University of Toronto Abstract: Emotion theorists and neurobiologists have much to share but they lack a common language for doing so. Emotion theorists rely on causal assumptions that are simple, linear, and cognitivist in character, and they emphasize psychological wholes that cannot be explained by the interaction of their constituents. Conversely, neurobiologists focus on the interaction of multiple components, invoking complex, bidirectional causal processes, but they rarely extend their analysis to psychologically meaningful wholes. Dynamic systems principles can provide a bridge between the psychology and neurobiology of emotion: (1) by explaining psychological as well as neural processes in terms of bidirectional causation and emergent part-whole relations, and (2) by grounding a model of self-organizing emotional states in explicit correspondences between psychological and neural events. I first argue that the application of dynamic systems ideas to emotion theory permits a reconceptualization of emotion-appraisal states as self-organizing wholes. These are proposed to emerge from bidirectional causal interactions among perceptual, cognitive, and emotional constituents, and to maintain those interactions through vertical ("circular") causality. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion as well as mechanisms of integration by which they interact. Based on dynamic systems concepts, these mechanisms are identified as nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion-appraisal states with reference to these neural mechanisms. KEYWORDS: appraisal, bidirectional causality, cognition, dynamic systems, emotion, neurobiology, part-whole relations, self-organization FULL TEXT: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Lewis-01212003/Referees/ ======================================================================= SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT (1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review. (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential impact!). *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Please note: Your email address has been added to our user database for Calls for Commentators, the reason you received this email. If you do not wish to receive further Calls, please feel free to change your mailshot status through your User Login link on the BBSPrints homepage, using your username and password. Or, email a response with the word "remove" in the subject line. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Jeffrey Gray - Editor Behavioral and Brain Sciences bbs at bbsonline.org http://www.bbsonline.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- From nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz Wed Mar 10 21:45:56 2004 From: nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz (Nik Kasabov) Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 15:45:56 +1300 Subject: ICONIP'2004 Submission reminder Message-ID: The 10th International Conference on Neuro-Information Processing ICONIP'2004, sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly APNNA, will be held in Calcutta, India, 21-25 November 2004. Paper submissions are encouraged to the following tracks: Brain-like computing Computational neuro- science Neuroinformatics Neural network hardware Cognitive science Learning algorithms Evolutionary computation Quantum computing Bayesian computing Novel neural network architectures Support vector machines and kernel methods Fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy and other hybrid systems Brain study models Bio-informatics Pattern recognition Time series prediction and data analysis Image processing and vision Speech and signal processing Key Dates: Papers Submission: March 15, 2004 Tutorial / Special Session Proposals: June 30, 2004 Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2004 Camera-Ready Copy Due: August 30, 2004 Early Registration: September 15, 2004 Further Details: WWW site: http://www.isical.ac.in/~iconip04 email: iconip04 at isical.ac.in address: Conference Secretariat, ICONIP 2004 Electronics & Communication Sciences Unit Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road Calcutta 700 108, INDIA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Nik Kasabov, Program Chair (nkasabov at aut.ac.nz) Prof. Nikhil Pal, General Chair (nikhil at isical.ac.in) From ckello at gmu.edu Thu Mar 11 13:09:28 2004 From: ckello at gmu.edu (Christopher Kello) Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 13:09:28 -0500 Subject: preprint available: neural network models of the articulatory-acoustic forward mapping Message-ID: <002a01c40793$fe4a5dd0$3a94ae81@bak> The following paper may be of interest to some connectionists. It can be downloaded at http://archlab.gmu.edu/cogdyn/publications Regards, Christopher Kello Department of Psychology 3F5 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 Kello, C. T., & Plaut, D. C. (in press). A neural network model of the articulatory-acoustic forward mapping trained on recordings of articulatory parameters. To appear in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Abstract Three neural network models were trained on the forward mapping from articulatory positions to acoustic outputs for a single speaker of the Edinburgh multi-channel articulatory speech database. The model parameters (i.e., connection weights) were learned via the backpropagation of error signals generated by the difference between acoustic outputs of the models, and their acoustic targets. Efficacy of the trained models was assessed by subjecting the models' acoustic outputs to speech intelligibility tests. The results of these tests showed that enough phonetic information was captured by the models to support rates of word identification as high as 84%, approaching an identification rate of 92% for the actual target stimuli. These forward models could serve as one component of a data-driven articulatory synthesizer. The models also provide the first step toward building a model of spoken word acquisition and phonological development trained on real speech. From nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz Thu Mar 11 23:21:28 2004 From: nik.kasabov at aut.ac.nz (Nik Kasabov) Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:21:28 +1300 Subject: A new deadline for the ICONIP'04 submissions Message-ID: Many requests have been sent for an extension of the deadline for the ICONIP'04 submissions, which now is 15 April 2004. The 10th International Conference on Neuro-Information Processing ICONIP'2004, sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly APNNA, will be held in Calcutta, India, 21-25 November 2004. Paper submissions are encouraged to the following tracks: Brain-like computing Computational neuro- science Neuroinformatics Neural network hardware Cognitive science Learning algorithms Evolutionary computation Quantum computing Bayesian computing Novel neural network architectures Support vector machines and kernel methods Fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy and other hybrid systems Brain study models Bio-informatics Pattern recognition Time series prediction and data analysis Image processing and vision Speech and signal processing Key Dates: Papers Submission: April 15, 2004 Tutorial / Special Session Proposals: June 30, 2004 Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2004 Camera-Ready Copy Due: August 30, 2004 Early Registration: September 15, 2004 Further Details: WWW site: http://www.isical.ac.in/~iconip04 email: iconip04 at isical.ac.in address: Conference Secretariat, ICONIP 2004 Electronics & Communication Sciences Unit Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road Calcutta 700 108, INDIA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Nikola Kasabov, Program Chair (nkasabov at aut.ac.nz) Prof. Nikhil Pal, General Chair (nikhil at isical.ac.in) From vittorio.sanguineti at unige.it Fri Mar 12 11:25:56 2004 From: vittorio.sanguineti at unige.it (Vittorio Sanguineti) Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 17:25:56 +0100 Subject: 1st Announcement: 2nd European School of Neuroengineering "M. Grattarola" Message-ID: <4051E494.2020103@unige.it> First Announcement *********************************************************************** 2nd EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF NEUROENGINEERING "MASSIMO GRATTAROLA" nEUro.IT Telecom Italia Learning Services University of Genova GENOVA (ITALY), 9-12 JUNE 2004 *********************************************************************** PROGRAM CHAIRS: V. Sanguineti (I), S. Martinoia (I), A.K. Engel (D) WEBSITES: www.tils.com/neurobit www.bio.dibe.unige.it/news_and_events/news_and_events_frames.htm/ The school, named after Massimo Grattarola who initiated the series in 2000, will be held From bogus@does.not.exist.com Fri Mar 12 08:23:22 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2004 13:23:22 -0000 Subject: Professorship position Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C023F4D05@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From wahba at cs.wisc.edu Mon Mar 15 20:12:17 2004 From: wahba at cs.wisc.edu (Grace Wahba) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 19:12:17 -0600 (CST) Subject: ASSIST code-statistical model building-kernels Message-ID: <200403160112.TAA02559@juno.stat.wisc.edu> I have received the following announcement regarding ASSIST, a collection of R functions which may be of interest to some members of this list. From yuedong at pstat.ucsb.edu Mon Mar 15 14:46:52 2004 From: yuedong at pstat.ucsb.edu (Yuedong Wang) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 11:46:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: Announcing ASSIST Message-ID: We have put together a package ASSIST, a collection of R functions for fitting many spline-based non-parametric/semi-parametric linear/non-linear fixed/mixed models. The general form of smoothing splines based on reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces is used to model nonparametric functions. Some well known special cases include polynomial, periodic, spherical, thin-plate splines and L splines as well as smoothing spline ANOVA models. It also covers some cases of generalized additive models, multiple index models, varying coefficient models, functional linear models, and self-modeling nonlinear regression models. Users may also provide their own kernels. The package contains five main R functions: 1. ssr fits non-parametric regression models for independent and correlated Gaussian data, and for independent binomial, Poisson and Gamma data; 2. slm fits semi-parametric linear mixed-effects models; 3. nnr fits non-parametric nonlinear regression models; 4. snr fits semi-parametric nonlinear regression models; 5. snm fits semi-parametric nonlinear mixed-effects models. These extend such existing functions in R (S+) as smooth.spline, gam, nls, lme and nlme. The current version can deal with small to moderate data sets only. We are working on options to deal with large data sets. ASSIST may be obtained at CRAN http://cran.us.r-project.org/ or http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/faculty/yuedong/software Detailed information about these functions and many examples can be found in the manual of this package, which again can be downloaded from the above site. Comments and suggestions are highly appreciated! Yuedong Wang and Chunlei Ke From terry at salk.edu Mon Mar 15 23:50:41 2004 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:50:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 16:4 In-Reply-To: <200402031804.i13I4rE81136@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: <200403160450.i2G4ofc88310@purkinje.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 16, Number 4 - April 1, 2004 NOTE The Shape of Neural Dependence Rick L. Jenison and Richard A. Reale LETTERS On the Phase Reduction and Response Dynamics of Neural Oscillator Populations Eric Brown, Jeff Moehlis and Philip Holmes Estimating the Entropy Rate of Spike Trains via Lempel-Ziv Complexity Jose M. Amigo, Janusz Szczepanski, Elek Wajnryb, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives Investigation on Possible Neural Architectures Underlying Information- Geometric Measures Masami Tatsuno and Masato Okada Robustifying AdaBoost by Adding the Naive Error Rate Takashi Takenouchi and Shinto Eguchi Boosting with Noisy Data: Some Views from Statistical Theory Wenxin Jiang Different Paradigms for Choosing Sequential Reweighting Algorithms Gilles Blanchard Robust Formulations for Training Multilayer Perceptrons Tommi Karkkainen and Erkki Heikkola An Extended Projection Neural Network for Constrained Optimization Youshen Xia ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2004 - VOLUME 16 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $108 $54 $57.78 Individual $95 $101.65 $143 $85 $90.95 Institution $635 $679.45 $689 $572 $612.04 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From school at cogs.nbu.bg Tue Mar 16 09:31:54 2004 From: school at cogs.nbu.bg (SCHOOL) Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 16:31:54 +0200 Subject: Summer School in Cognitive Science 2004, NBU Message-ID: 11th INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Sofia, New Bulgarian University, July 4 24, 2004 Courses: I week: July 5-11 - Edward Necka (U. Cracow, Poland) Creativity - Franz Schmalhofer (U. Osnabrueck, Germany) Situation Models and Embodied Language Processes - George Kampis (U. Budapest, Hungary) Deconstructing the Mind: Anti-Cartesian Perspective on Cognition II week: July 12-18 - Charles De Weert and Rob van Lier (U. Nijmegen, Netherlands) Color and Form in Visual Perception - Myron Braunstein (UC Irvine, USA) Visual Perception of the 3D World - Boicho Kokinov (NBU, Bulgaria) Understanding Human Analogy-Making III week: July 19 - 24 - Jeffrey Elman (UC, San Diego, USA) Connectionist Models of Learning and Development - Fernanda Ferreira (Michigan State U, USA) Psycholinguistics: Language as a product and as an action - Richard Belew (UC, San Diego, USA) Adaptive Individuals in Evolving Populations: Combining Evolutionary Modeling with Learning and Development Models In addition, panel discussions, participant symposia, and project work will take place. Organised by the New Bulgarian University Endorsed by the Cognitive Science Society Sponsored by the European Commission (EUROCOG project) For more information look at: http://www.nbu.bg/cogs/events/ss2004.htm Central and East European Center for Cognitive Science New Bulgarian University 21 Montevideo Str. Sofia 1635 phone: (+3592) 8110-403 e-mail: school at cogs.nbu.bg ________________________________ New Bulgarian University http://mail.nbu.bg From terry at salk.edu Mon Mar 15 23:50:41 2004 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:50:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: NEURAL COMPUTATION 16:4 In-Reply-To: <200402031804.i13I4rE81136@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: <200403160450.i2G4ofc88310@purkinje.salk.edu> Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 16, Number 4 - April 1, 2004 NOTE The Shape of Neural Dependence Rick L. Jenison and Richard A. Reale LETTERS On the Phase Reduction and Response Dynamics of Neural Oscillator Populations Eric Brown, Jeff Moehlis and Philip Holmes Estimating the Entropy Rate of Spike Trains via Lempel-Ziv Complexity Jose M. Amigo, Janusz Szczepanski, Elek Wajnryb, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives Investigation on Possible Neural Architectures Underlying Information- Geometric Measures Masami Tatsuno and Masato Okada Robustifying AdaBoost by Adding the Naive Error Rate Takashi Takenouchi and Shinto Eguchi Boosting with Noisy Data: Some Views from Statistical Theory Wenxin Jiang Different Paradigms for Choosing Sequential Reweighting Algorithms Gilles Blanchard Robust Formulations for Training Multilayer Perceptrons Tommi Karkkainen and Erkki Heikkola An Extended Projection Neural Network for Constrained Optimization Youshen Xia ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2004 - VOLUME 16 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $108 $54 $57.78 Individual $95 $101.65 $143 $85 $90.95 Institution $635 $679.45 $689 $572 $612.04 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From movellan at mplab.ucsd.edu Tue Mar 16 22:04:35 2004 From: movellan at mplab.ucsd.edu (Javier R. Movellan) Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:04:35 -0800 Subject: Kolmogorov Open Source Project Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 749 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/1c435bf2/attachment-0001.bin From schunn+ at pitt.edu Wed Mar 17 10:07:31 2004 From: schunn+ at pitt.edu (Christian Schunn) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 10:07:31 -0500 Subject: upcoming ICCM2004 submission deadline Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: multipart/alternative Size: 5748 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/00000000/4065948b/attachment-0001.bin From nestor.parga at uam.es Wed Mar 17 13:27:45 2004 From: nestor.parga at uam.es (Nestor Parga) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 19:27:45 +0100 Subject: Sabbatical and post-doctoral positions Message-ID: <405898A1.3070403@uam.es> Computational and Systems Neuroscience - Dept of Theoretical Physics, Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid - Interested candidates are invited to apply for a sabbatical or a post-doctoral position for research work in Computational and Systems Neuroscience at the "Group of Computational Neuroscience", Universidad Aut?noma de Madrid, Spain. These positions are funded by the Spanish Ministery of Education (MECD). The program contains two modalities: sabbatical and post-docs. Both are for non-spanish researchers (or spanish with residence outside Spain). Eligible candidates should have a Ph. D. in scientific disciplines such as Neuroscience, Physics, Maths or Computer Science). Candidates for a sabbatical position are required to have obtained their PhD before Jan 1998, and to possess a good experience in research work on Computational Neuroscience. The duration of the stay for sabbatical positions is from 3 to 12 months. Post-docs should have obtained their PhD after Jan 1998. The duration of the stay for post-docs is from 9 to 18 months. More information about these positions can be found at the MECD's web address: http://www.univ.mecd.es/univ/jsp/plantillaAncho.jsp?id=14 The position should start between Sept 1st, 2004 and March 1st 2005. The final choice among the candidates - supported by research groups in Spain - will be made by the MECD. Candidates are expected to work in interaction with the theoretical team of the Computational Neuroscience group to carry out joint work on information processing in the brain Details about the current work of the group can be found at the web site: http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/ Interested candidates are encouraged to send a description of their research interests and their curriculum vitae, including a list of all publications to the address below. Candidates for the post-doctoral position should include the names of three scientists who could send recommendation letters. The deadline for applications is March 23, 2004. Contact person: N?stor Parga -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- | Nestor Parga | | | | Phone : (+34) 91-497-4542 | | Dpto. de Fisica Teorica, C-XI | Fax : (+34) 91-497-3936 | | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid | E-mail: nestor.parga at uam.es | | 28049 Madrid, SPAIN | | | | | http://www.ft.uam.es/neurociencia/nestor | ------------------------------------------------------------------- From bogus@does.not.exist.com Tue Mar 16 10:54:00 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:54:00 -0000 Subject: 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW 9) Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C024544CD@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From mr287 at georgetown.edu Wed Mar 17 14:17:34 2004 From: mr287 at georgetown.edu (Maximilian Riesenhuber) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:17:34 -0500 Subject: postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience/fMRI, Georgetown University Message-ID: <4058A44E.2010502@georgetown.edu> Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience and fMRI Lab for Neural Information Processing Department of Neuroscience Georgetown University A postdoctoral position is available immediately in the lab of Max Riesenhuber at Georgetown University to study the neural mechanisms underlying real world object recognition (in particular object recognition in cluttered scenes and the role of attention in object recognition) using a combination of computational modeling, psychophysics, and fMRI. The project is part of an NIH-funded collaboration between the Riesenhuber lab at Georgetown and labs at MIT, Caltech and Northwestern. Candidates should have a research record in a vision-related field, a strong quantitative background and experience in two of the following: computational neuroscience, visual psychophysics, fMRI. Initial appointment will be for a two-year period, with the possibility of extension for another year. Salary is based on experience and conforms to NIH levels. The lab investigates the computational mechanisms underlying human perception as a gateway to understanding information processing and learning in cortex. In our work, we combine computational models with psychophysical and fMRI data from our own lab and collaborators, as well as with single unit data obtained in collaboration with physiology labs. We also collaborate with machine vision groups to compare the performance of our model of object recognition in cortex to current machine vision systems on real-world vision tasks. For more information, see http://riesenhuberlab.neuro.georgetown.edu, or email Max Riesenhuber at mr287 at georgetown.edu. Georgetown University has a strong neuroscience community with fifty labs involved in the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. Its scenic campus overlooks the Potomac River in Washington, DC, one of the most intellectual and culturally rich cities in the country. Interested candidates should send a CV, representative reprints, and the names and contact information of three references to Maximilian Riesenhuber (mr287 at georgetown.edu). Review of applications will begin immmediately, and will continue until the position is filled. ********************************************************************** Maximilian Riesenhuber phone: 202-687-9198 Department of Neuroscience fax: 202-784-3562 Georgetown University Medical Center email: mr287 at georgetown.edu Research Building Room EP09 3970 Reservoir Rd., NW Washington, DC 20007 http://riesenhuberlab.neuro.georgetown.edu ********************************************************************** From cindy at bu.edu Thu Mar 18 15:38:29 2004 From: cindy at bu.edu (Cynthia Bradford) Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 15:38:29 -0500 Subject: Neural Networks 17(3) Message-ID: <008001c40d28$f90c43c0$903dc580@cnspc31> NEURAL NETWORKS 17(3) Contents - Volume 17, Number 3 - 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------ INVITED ARTICLE Reinforcement learning with via-point representation Hiroyuki Miyamoto, Jun Morimoto, Kenji Doya, and Mitsuo Kawato NEURAL NETWORKS LETTER Self-organized two-state membrane potential transitions in a network of realistically modeled cortical neurons Siu Kang, Katsunori Kitano, and Tomoki Fukai CONTRIBUTED ARTICLES ***** Psychology and Cognitive Science ***** A robust method for distinguishing between learned and spurious attractors Anthony V. Robins and Simon J.R. McCallum ***** Neuroscience and Neuropsychology ***** Investigation of color constancy with a neural network Rytis Stanikunas, Henrikas Vaitkevicius, and Janus J. Kulikowski ***** Mathematical and Computational Analysis ***** Models of MT and MST areas using wake-sleep algorithm Katsuki Katayama, Masataka Ando, and Tsuyoshi Horiguchi A via-point time optimization algorithm for complex sequential trajectory formation Yasuhiro Wada and Mitsuo Kawato Marginal median SOM for document organization and retrieval A. Georgakis, C. Kotropoulos, A. Xafopoulos, and I. Pitas Absolute exponential stability of recurrent neural networks with Lipschitz-continuous activation functions and time delays Jinde Cao and Jun Wang Absolutely exponential stability of a class of neural networks with unbounded delay Jiye Zhang, Yoshihiro Suda, and Takashi Iwasa Twinned principal curves Jos Koetsier, Ying Han, and Colin Fyfe ***** Engineering and Design ***** Massively parallel networks for edge localization and contour integration: Adaptable relaxation approach Toshiro Kubota A neural network controller for hydronic heating systems of solar buildings Athanassios A. Argiriou, Ioannis Bellas-Velidis, Michael Kummert, and Philippe Andre ***** Technology and Applications ***** A high performance k-NN approach using binary neural networks Victoria J. Hodge, Ken J. Lees, and James L. Austin ***** Book Reviews ***** "Foundations of Wavelet Networks and Applications" authored by S. Sitharama Iyengar, E.C. Cho, and Vir V. Phoho and reviewed by Gokhan Bakir "Neural Engineering: Computation, Representation and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems" authored by Chris Eliasmith and Charles Anderson and reviewed by Michael G. Paulin CURRENT EVENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Electronic access: www.elsevier.com/locate/neunet/. Individuals can look up instructions, aims & scope, see news, tables of contents, etc. Those who are at institutions which subscribe to Neural Networks get access to full article text as part of the institutional subscription. 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The INNS does not invoice for payment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Membership Type INNS ENNS JNNS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- membership with $80 (regular) SEK 660 Y 13,000 Neural Networks (plus Y 2,000 enrollment fee) $20 (student) SEK 460 Y 11,000 (plus Y 2,000 enrollment fee) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- membership without $30 SEK 200 not available to Neural Networks non-students (subscribe through another society) Y 5,000 student (plus Y 2,000 enrollment fee) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: _____________________________________ Title: _____________________________________ Address: _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ Phone: _____________________________________ Fax: _____________________________________ Email: _____________________________________ Payment: [ ] Check or money order enclosed, payable to INNS or ENNS OR [ ] Charge my VISA or MasterCard card number ____________________________ expiration date ________________________ INNS Membership 19 Mantua Road Mount Royal NJ 08061 USA 856 423 0162 (phone) 856 423 3420 (fax) innshq at talley.com http://www.inns.org ENNS Membership University of Skovde P.O. Box 408 531 28 Skovde Sweden 46 500 44 83 37 (phone) 46 500 44 83 99 (fax) enns at ida.his.se http://www.his.se/ida/enns JNNS Membership c/o Professor Shozo Yasui Kyushu Institute of Technology Graduate School of Life Science and Engineering 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu-ku Kitakyushu 808-0196 Japan 81 93 695 6108 (phone and fax) jnns at brain.kyutech.ac.jp http://www.jnns.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From poznan at iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu Wed Mar 17 17:29:18 2004 From: poznan at iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu (ROMAN POZNANSKI) Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:29:18 -0500 Subject: J. Integr. Neurosci., Vol.3, No.1 April 2004 Message-ID: <4058D13E.2010302@iub-psych.psych.indiana.edu> JOURNAL OF INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE Volume 3, Issue 1, April 2004 Copyright ? 2004 Imperial College Press. All rights reserved. Editorial 1 G.A. Chauvet Short Communications Is It Possible to Restore Function with Two Percent Surviving Neural Tissue? 3 P. Bach-Y-Rita The Role of Volume Transmission in an Endogenous Brain S. W. Kercel Research Reports Concept Formation: 'Object' Attributes Dynamically Inhibited from Conscious Awareness 19 A. Snyder, T. Bossomaier and D. J. Mitchell Early Integrative Cognitive Development in Human Infants 35 M. Molina, M. Barbu-Roth and F. Jouen The Endogenous Brain 47 S. W. Kercel Modeling Discoordination of Cortical Neuroactivity: Relevance for the Executive Control of Attention in Alzheimer's Disease 73 M. Moutoussis, M. W. Orrell and R. Morris Investigating human color preferences in the perception of complex three-dimensional Structures 93 L. B. Coelho, M.C. Ferreira de Oliveira, and L. Da Fontoura Costa Book Review Computational Neuroscience: A Comprehensive Approach by JianFeng Feng R.R.Poznanski 123 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For orders within Europe, please contact the Imperial College Press sales department at: Tel: +44 (0)20 7836-0888 Fax: +44 (0)20 7836-2020 during U.K. business hours. Outside Europe, our books and journals are distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, SINGAPORE 596224 Fax: 65-6467-7667 Tel: 65-6466-5775 E-mail: wspc at wspc.com.sg Price Information: ISSN: 0219-6352 ; Vol. 3/2004; 4 Issues Special Rates: Individuals From chiba at Cogsci.ucsd.edu Sat Mar 20 05:18:17 2004 From: chiba at Cogsci.ucsd.edu (Andrea Chiba) Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 02:18:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: ICDL 2004 Call For Papers Message-ID: ICDL 2004 FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSION DEADLINE: May 5 2004. THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING: DEVELOPING SOCIAL BRAINS The Salk Institute October 20-22, 2004 San Diego, California http://icdl.cc The goal of the conference is to bring together leading researchers in neuroscience, machine learning, robotics, and developmental psychology, in order to gain new insights about learning and development in natural organisms and robots. The scope of developmental processes to be considered is broad, including cognitive, social, emotional, and many other skills exhibited by humans, and other animals. The theme of the conference this year will be "Developing Social Brains", but other topics related to development and learning are welcome. PAPER SUBMISSION Submission deadline is May 5 2004. Papers for the meeting can be submitted ONLY through the conference's web site at: http://icdl.cc. Papers can be submitted either as a 200 word summary or as a full paper (max 8 typeset pages). SPECIAL ISSUE ON NEUROCOMPUTING Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their paper for publication in a special issue of the Neurocomputing Journal, published by Elsevier Science B.V. (http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/neucom) INVITED TALKS (To be confirmed) Jeff Elman John Allman Eric Courchesne Terrence Sejnowski Joan Stiles James L. McClelland John Watson Dana Ballard Pietro Perona Rodney Brooks REVIEW PROCESS All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee. Papers will be judged and accepted for the meeting based on the clarity with which the work is described and the relevance to the goals of the conference. All accepted papers not selected for oral talks as well as papers explicitly submitted as poster presentations will be included in one of three evening poster sessions. Authors will be notified of the presentation format of their papers by the beginning of July. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chair: Javier R. Movellan: Co-Chairs: Andrea Chiba, Gedeon Deak, Jochen Triesch. Program Chair: Jochen Triesch. Program Co-Chairs: Marian Stewart-Bartlett, Gwen Ford Littlewort. Publications Chair: Gedeon Deak. ADVISORY BOARD: Jeff Elman James L. McClelland Sandy Pentland Terrence Sejnowski Mriganka Sur Esther Thelen Juyang Weng PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Minoru Asada Dana Ballard Luis Baumela Mark Baxter Jeff Cohn Kerstin Dautenhahn Risto Miikulainen Martha Farah Masahiro Fujita William Greenough Michael Hasselmo Shoji Itakura Hiroshi Ishiguro Robert Jacobs David Kleinfeld Mark Konishi Denis Mareshal Douglas Nitz Roz Picard Matthew Schlesinger Gregor Schoener Geoffrey Schoenbaum Linda Smith Olaf Sporns Luc Steels Manuela Veloso Paul Verschure Christoph von der Malsburg Hiroyuki Yano From kechen at bme.jhu.edu Sun Mar 21 12:22:00 2004 From: kechen at bme.jhu.edu (Kechen Zhang) Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2004 12:22:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: Postdoc Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Postdoc Position in Computational Neuroscience A postdoctoral research position in computational neuroscience is available immediately at Johns Hopkins University. An ideal candidate should have solid mathematical background and strong interest in brain theories. Depending on the preparation and the research interest of the candidate, projects in close collaboration with local experimental labs are possible. Please send inquiries and all communications to Kechen Zhang. Application for this position should include a CV, representative papers or writings, and a cover letter with the contact information of three references. Dr. Kechen Zhang Department of Biomedical Engineering Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 720 Rutland Avenue - Traylor Building 407 Baltimore, Maryland 21205 Email: kechen at bme.jhu.edu Phone: 410-955-3538 FAX: 443-287-5080 website: http://www.bme.jhu.edu//labs/kechen/ From saadd at aston.ac.uk Tue Mar 23 11:55:29 2004 From: saadd at aston.ac.uk (D SAAD) Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:55:29 +0000 Subject: Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Aston University Message-ID: <40606C01.9050407@aston.ac.uk> Aston University School of Engineering & Applied Science Neural Computing Research Group Research Fellow (2 Posts) Ref No. R04/68/98 We are looking for highly motivated individuals for two postdoctoral research positions in the general areas of coding and computational complexity. The emphasis of this research will be on applying theoretical and numerical methods from statistical physics to study various properties of multi-user communication systems, distributed computing/communication and related hard computational problems. This research activity is part of a European FP-6 consortium (EVERGROW). Applicants should have excellent mathematical and computational skills, and one or more of the following: a background in statistical physics, information theory and computational complexity. The positions will be offered for 12 months in the first instance with a possible extension beyond this period. Further details on the research project can be found on http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk Informal enquiries should be directed to David Saad : D.Saad at aston.ac.uk Further Particulars and Application forms are available on http://www.aston.ac.uk/hr/R0468%20advert.htm or from Personnel Services, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK by telephoning: 0121 359 0870 (24 hour answerphone), or by email: b.a.power at aston.ac.uk , quoting the reference number. Closing date for applications: 9 April 2004 From bengio at idiap.ch Tue Mar 23 09:50:50 2004 From: bengio at idiap.ch (Samy Bengio) Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:50:50 +0100 (CET) Subject: workshop announcement Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to announce the following Workshop: JOINT AMI/PASCAL/IM2/M4 Workshop on Multimodal Interaction and Related Machine Learning Algorithms http://www.idiap.ch/events/workshop-mlmi04/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where: Centre du Parc (http://www.hotelduparc.ch/), Martigny, Switzerland When: 21-23 June 2004 Deadline for paper submission: 22 April 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the framework of this workshop, participants are invited to submit full papers for oral or poster presentation in the following areas of interest: + human-human communication modeling + speech and visual processing + multi-modal processing, fusion and fission + multi-modal dialog modeling + human-human interaction modeling + multi-modal data structuring and presentation + multimedia indexing and retrieval + meeting structure analysis + meeting summarizing + multimodal meeting annotation + machine learning applied to the above ========================= The workshop is organized jointly by 4 European and Swiss National projects: AMI (Augmented Multiparty Interaction, http://www.amiproject.org) is a newly launched (January 2004) European Integrated Project (IP) funded under Framework FP6 as part of its IST program. AMI targets computer enhanced multi-modal interaction in the context of meetings. The project aims at substantially advancing the state-of-the-art, within important underpinning technologies (such as human-human communication modeling, speech recognition, computer vision, multimedia indexing and retrieval). It will also produce tools for off-line and on-line browsing of multi-modal meeting data, including meeting structure analysis and summarizing functions. The project also makes recorded and annotated multimodal meeting data widely available for the European research community, thereby contributing to the research infrastructure in the field. PASCAL (Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning, http:///www.pascal-network.org) is a newly lauched (December 2003) European Network of Excellence (NoE) as part of its IST program. The NoE brings together experts from basic research areas such as Statistics, Optimisation and Computational Learning and from a number of application areas, with the objective of integrating research agendas and improving the state of the art in all concerned fields. IM2 (Interactive Multimodal Information Management, http://www.im2.ch) is a Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) aiming at the advancement of research, and the development of prototypes, in the field of man-machine interaction. IM2 is particularly concerned with technologies coordinating natural input modes (such as speech, image, pen, touch, hand gestures, head and/or body movements, and even physiological sensors) with multimedia system outputs, such as speech, sounds, images, 3D graphics and animation. Among other application, IM2 is also targeting research and development in the context of smart meeting rooms. M4 (Multi-Modal Meeting Manager, http://www.m4project.org) is a EU IST project launched in March 2002 concerned with the construction of a demonstration system to enable structuring, browsing and querying of an archive of automatically analysed meetings. The archived meetings will have taken place in a room equipped with multimodal sensors. ========================= General Chairs : Samy Bengio, IDIAP Herve Bourlard, IDIAP Programme Committee : Jean Carletta, University of Edinburg Phil Green, Univ. Sheffield Jan Larson, Technical University of Denmark Nelson Morgan, ICSI/Berkeley Erkki Oja, Helsinky University of Technology Barbara Peskin, ICSI Berkeley Thierry Pun, University of Geneva Steve Renals, University of Edinburg John Shawe-Taylor, University of Southampton Steve Whittaker, University of Sheffield ========================= Current list of invited speakers: Bill Buxton, Buxton Design Yorick Wilks, Sheffield University Jonathan Foote, FX Palo Alto Laboratory Prof Stephen Cox, University of East Anglia Prof Roddy Cowie, Queen's University, Belfast Jordy Cohen, VoiceSignal David Nahamoo, IBM Research ---- Samy Bengio Senior Researcher in Machine Learning. IDIAP, CP 592, rue du Simplon 4, 1920 Martigny, Switzerland. tel: +41 27 721 77 39, fax: +41 27 721 77 12. mailto:bengio at idiap.ch, http://www.idiap.ch/~bengio From bogus@does.not.exist.com Thu Mar 25 12:58:57 2004 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 18:58:57 +0100 Subject: 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop: Call for Abstracts Message-ID: <736F0925D69F9941B3BA8AEED0F5E75C024544CF@02-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> From schunn+ at pitt.edu Wed Mar 31 13:24:07 2004 From: schunn+ at pitt.edu (Christian Schunn) Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 13:24:07 -0500 Subject: ICCM2004 submission deadline extension Message-ID: International Conference on Cognitive Modeling July 30 to August 1, 2004 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Tutorials and Doctoral Consortium, July 29) Because of some confusion on the deadline and many who appear to need a few extra days, we have decided to extend the paper and symposia submission deadlines for ICCM2004 to April 7th, 2004. So, to list all the deadlines as they stand now: Papers + Symposia: April 7, 23:59 EDST Poster-abstracts: June 15, 23:59 EDST Doctoral Consortium submissions: April 1, 23:59 EDST For further information about ICCM2004 and submission instructions, see http://simon.lrdc.pitt.edu/~iccm/ CONFERENCE CHAIRS Marsha Lovett (lovett at cmu.edu) Christian Schunn (schunn at pitt.edu) Christian Lebiere (clebiere at maad.com) Paul Munro (pmunro at mail.sis.pitt.edu) From b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue Mar 30 10:28:37 2004 From: b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk (Bruce Philip Graham) Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:28:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: Edinburgh Summer School in Neuroinformatics Simulation Tools Message-ID: <2733.139.153.254.219.1080660517.squirrel@yen.cs.stir.ac.uk> 2004 EDINBURGH SUMMER SCHOOL IN NEUROINFORMATICS SIMULATION TOOLS Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation University of Edinburgh. August 23-27, 2004 * Application deadline: 4th June 2004 * This summer school in Neuroinformatics Simulation Tools is a five day intensive course which will provide a practical introduction to using neuroscience simulation tools including NEURON and Catacomb for computational modelling of neural systems. The course will be held at the e-Science Institute in the centre of Edinburgh and will include talks from invited speakers as well as practical hands-on experience using the latest simulation tools. The course is aimed at PhD students, postdocs and faculty in neuroscience and related disciplines wishing to learn how to apply computational modelling techniques to their research problems. Bursaries are available for PhD students to help with travel and accommodation costs. For more details, and an online application form visit:- http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/school -- Dr Bruce Graham, Lecturer (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk) Dept. of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA phone: +44 1786 467 432 fax: +44 1786 464 551 -- The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA. Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. In such case, you should destroy this message and kindly notify the sender by reply email. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind.