From terry at salk.edu Mon May 1 13:34:04 2006 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 10:34:04 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION June, 2006 In-Reply-To: <200309271643.h8RGhIA58569@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 18, Number 6 - June 1, 2006 Letters How Inhibitory Oscillations Can Train Neural Networks and Punish Competitors Kenneth A. Norman, Ehren Newman, Greg Detre, and Sean Polyn Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data Sepp Hochreiter and Klaus Obermayer Analysis of Cluttered Scenes Using an Elastic Matching Approach for Stereo Images Christian Eckes, Jochen Triesch, and Christoph von der Malsburg Optimal Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity for Precise Action Potential Firing in Supervised Learning Jean-Pascal Pfister, Taro Toyoizumi, David Barber, and Wufram Gerstner Stongly Improved Stability and Faster Convergence of Temporal Sequence Learning by Utilising Input Correlations Only Stereo Images Bernd Porr and Florentin Woergoetter Variational Bayesian Multinomial Probit Regression with Gaussian Process Priors Mark Girolami and Simon Rogers ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2006 - VOLUME 18 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $114 $54 $57.78 Individual $100 $107.00 $154 $90 $96.30 Institution $730 $781.10 $784 $657 $702.99 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From david.barber at idiap.ch Tue May 2 08:35:22 2006 From: david.barber at idiap.ch (David Barber) Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 14:35:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation and Presentations : IDIAP 15th Anniversary Workshop Message-ID: <00e501c66de4$e1249540$b7dd21c0@davidbarber> ************************************************************************************** Call for Participation and Presentations: IDIAP 15th Anniversary Workshop 12-13 September, 2006 http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland Abstract Submission Deadline : July 11, 2006 ************************************************************************************** Workshop Description : IDIAP is leading Swiss research institute dedicated to the study of human-machine interaction, with strong activity in speech processing, machine learning, multimodal interaction, brain computer interfaces, computer vision and information retrieval. As part of IDIAP's 15th Anniversary, the workshop will provide an informal setting within which to discuss and interact, taking place in the beautiful setting of Martigny in the Swiss Alps. The two day workshop will cover four key areas: * Machine Learning * Speech Processing * Computer Vision * Information Retrieval The last 15 years has brought a maturation in these fields, leading to many theoretical and practical advances. The statistical paradigm has been prevalent in recent years, leading to a common framework within which many of the techniques applied in these different areas may be related. Whilst, therefore, a stronger understanding of the commonality of techniques now exists, each field requires specific insights for the continued and successful development toward solving substantial real-world applications. The workshop will address these areas from the viewpoint of key progress made, current techniques and applications, and will discuss future prospects in these ever growing and exciting fields. The scope of the workshop is broad, with the desire to encourage interaction between researchers from these diverse areas. Of particular interest are key technical developments, and the highlighting of current difficulties preventing their further application to substantial real-world problems. ************************************************************************************** Invited speakers (provisional) : Chris Bishop (Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK) Nelson Morgan (International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, USA) Thomas Hofmann (Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany) Patrick Perez (Irisa/Inria-Rennes, France.) ************************************************************************************** Call for Presentations : We invite talks from students and researchers in any of the above fields, addressing either a theoretical or application issue. Talks which discuss technical developments are welcome, particularly those which address key stumbling blocks in the application of theory to substantial real-world problems. The talks are to be 15 minutes + 5 minutes questions. Please see http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ for submission of abstracts of presentations. * Deadline for abstract submission is 11:59pm (GMT) Tuesday July 11, 2006. * Decisions will be emailed on or before July 20. ************************************************************************************** Registration for the workshop is free, but limited to 150 participants. ************************************************************************************** Travel Grants : A small number of travel grants (limited to CHF 500 each) are available. Please see http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ for details of how to apply. ************************************************************************************** Organizers: David Barber (IDIAP) Herve Bourlard (IDIAP) From kamps at in.tum.de Thu May 4 04:23:06 2006 From: kamps at in.tum.de (Marc de Kamps) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 10:23:06 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 4th Neuroengineering School Message-ID: <000c01c66f53$f8bafad0$383c9f83@atknoll3> *********************************************************************** 4th European School of Neuro-IT and Neuroengineering Dynamics, Computation and Learning in Neural Systems GENOVA (ITALY), 13-17 JUNE 2006 *********************************************************************** ORGANIZED BY: University of Genova -Dept of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE), -Dept of Informatics, Sistems and Telematics (DIST), -Doctorate School on Science and Technology for the Information Society, PhD program on Bioengineering Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and University of Genova -Doctorate School on Humanoid Technologies, Phd program on Humanoid Technologies Neuro-IT EU Network of Excellence (nEUro-IT.net) NEUROversIT EU Marie Curie program WEBSITE: www.neuroengineering.it The school, named after Massimo Grattarola who initiated the series in 2000, will take place from June 13 to June 17, 2006 at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Genova, in the beautiful historical building of Villa Giustiniani-Cambiaso. The school is intended for junior and senior researchers and other professionals (doctors, engineers, biologists and psychologists etc.) working in these areas, as well as for students attending faculties of engineering, medicine, biology or psychology. A total of 50 PhD students or postdocs will be admitted. Admissions will be on first-come first-serve basis. This year, the school will address key topics in the Neuroengineering field, with a focus on ?Dynamics, Computation and Learning in Neural Systems? and their technical realization in artificial systems. All issues should be dealt with, in an interdisciplinary way, both from the biological and the IT/engineering perspective. The topics covered will include: 1) Neural-network dynamics -Neurobiology of in-vivo and in-vitro neuronal systems -Non linear dynamics and neuronal signal analysis -Theoretical and experimental models 2) Neural plasticity, learning and development -Neurobiology of learning and memory -Closed-loop system and learning -Learning and plasticity in in-vitro neuronal system 3) Coding and decoding neuronal signals -Rate/Time coding -Information transmission -Sensori-motor processing 4) Advanced neuro-prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces -Technological advances in BMI -Decoding of neuronal signals 5) Neuro-robotics and biologically inspired robots -Bi-directional neuro-robotic interfaces -Cognitive neuroscience -Biorobots CONFIRMED SPEAKERS John Beggs (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA) Fabio Benfenati (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Luca Berdondini (University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland) Egidio D?Angelo (University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy) Oscar de Feo (University College Cork, Cork, Ireland) Andreas Engel (Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany) Eduardo Fernandez (University M. Hernandez, Alicante, Spain) Michele Giugliano (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) Humeau Yann (CNRS, Strasbourg, FR) Rolf K?tter (University of Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany) Milena Koudelka-Hep (University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland) Sergio Martinoia (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Giorgio Metta (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Jaap van Pelt (Brain Institute, Amsterdam, NL) Tim Pearce (University of Leicester, Leicester, UK) Sajit Rao (MIT, Boston, USA) Giulio Sandini (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Vittorio Sanguineti (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Sara Solla (Northwestern University ,Chicago, USA) Vincent Torre (SISSA, Trieste, Italy) Paul Verschure (Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH-UZ, Zurich, Switzerland) REGISTRATION FEES (*) PhD students: 200 euros (250 euros after May 15th) Postdocs: 250 euros (300 euros after May 15th) Business and medical professionals: 350 euros (400 euros after May 15th) (*) includes program, reception, two coffee breaks and lunch each day, lab activities and lecture notes SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION: Andreas Engel (Hamburg, Germany) Marc de Kamps (M?nchen, Germany) Alois Knoll (M?nchen, Germany) Sergio Martinoia (Genova, Italy) Giulio Sandini (Genova, Italy) Vittorio Sanguineti (Genova, Italy) _____________________________________ Sergio Martinoia, PhD Associate Professor of Bioelectronics Neuroengineering and BionanoTechnologies - NBT - Group Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering - DIBE Via Opera Pia 11A, 16145, GENOVA, ITALY Tel. +39-10-3532251 Fax. +39-10-3532133 URL: http://www.bio.dibe.unige.it/ email: martinoia at dibe.unge.it From rammurthy at iiit.ac.in Wed May 3 05:39:52 2006 From: rammurthy at iiit.ac.in (Rammurthy) Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 15:09:52 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Special Issue of International Journal of Neural Systems Message-ID: <00b101c66e95$8bc5db20$1724a8c0@iiiteec432ffc0> Dear Sir/Madam, Here is an announcement of the special issue of International Journal of Neural Systems, World Scientific. Please submit your papers to the special issue. With Regards, Rama Murthy CALL FOR PAPERS - SPECIAL ISSUE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEURAL SYSTEMS ON Complex Valued Neural Networks and Neuro-computing: Novel Methods, Applications, and Implementations Editor-in-Chief: Hojjat Adeli, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. (Email: Adeli.1 at osu.edu) Guest Editors for this special issue: Vadrevu Sree Hari Rao, Department of Mathematics, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad -500072, INDIA E-mail: vshrao at yahoo.com Garimella Rama Murthy, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad - 500019, India, E-mail: rammurthy at iiit.net Tohru Nitta, Mathematical Neuroinformatics Group, Neuroscience Research Institute,National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan. E-mail: tohru-nitta at aist.go.jp Igor Aizenberg, Texas A&M University-Texarkana,Department of Computer and Information SciencesTexas 75505 USA, E-mail: igor.aizenberg at tamut.edu A complex valued neural network is a neural network (of arbitrary topology) which consists of complex valued input and/or weights and/or thresholds and/or activation functions. The need for such neural networks is very real. For instance, in electrical engineering, signals are complex valued. The processing of such signals requires the design and implementation of new complex valued neural network architectures. This subject has been gaining increasing interest and significance in recent years. Indeed, several interesting applications of the complex valued neural network architectures have been discussed in the following areas: ? Optoelectronic Imaging, ? Optical Computing, ? Remote Sensing, ? Quantum Neural Devices and Systems ? Spatiotemporal Analysis of Physiological Neural Systems, ? Artificial Neural Information Processing ? Communication System Design (Mobile Channel Equalizer Design), ? Direction of Arrival Estimation (Signal Processing) ? Traffic Control ? Robotics ? Neuron Dynamics ? Chaos in Complex Domain The wide applicability of these new class of networks potentially yield new theories required for novel and more effective functions and mechanisms. In this special issue of International Journal of Neural Systems the goal is to publish original contributions in this exciting and rapidly developing field of complex valued neural networks. Topics for the special issue include theory and applications of complex valued neural networks. All papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three referees. Submission of a manuscript implies that it is the authors' original unpublished work and is not being submitted for possible publication elsewhere. Please inform the guest editors and the Editor-in-Chief about your intention to submit a manuscript for possible publication in the special issue by May 10, 2006 and send the PDF file of your manuscript by October 31, 2006 to one of the Guest Editors with a copy to the Editor-in-Chief. From nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr Wed May 3 06:03:32 2006 From: nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee) Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 19:03:32 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Extended Deadline for ISABEL2006 (Inter. Symp. on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning) In-Reply-To: <43F9E56D.7080405@science.ru.nl> Message-ID: <200605031105.k43B5TAQ001231@neuron.kaist.ac.kr> Extended Deadline for 1-Page Summary : May 20, 2006 ISABEL 2006 International Symposium on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning - Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware for Brain-like Intelligent Functions - August 24-25, 2006 Seoul, Korea www.isabel2006.org isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr Organized by Brain Science Research Center, KAIST Cognitive Science Research Center, Yonsei University International Neural Network Society SIG-Korea 1. Topic and Goals Topics include, but are not limited to, -Models of auditory pathway -Models of visual pathway -Models of cognition, learning, and inference -Models of attention, emotion, and consciousness -Models of autonomous behavior -Hardware implementation of bio-inspired models -Engineering applications of bio-inspired models This symposium aims to bring together international researchers from the cognitive neuroscience and engineering communities for biologically-inspired models and system implementations with human-like intelligent functions. The previous meeting was held as a post-IJCNN Symposium on Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware (BIMH2005) at Montreal, Canada, on August 5, 2005. Although artificial neural networks are based on information processing mechanisms in our brain, there still exists a big gap between the biological neural networks and artificial neural networks. The more intelligence we would like to incorporate into artificial intelligent systems, the more biologically-inspired models and hardware are required. Fortunately the cognitive neuroscience has been developed enormously during the last decade, and engineers now have more to learn from the science. In this symposium we will discuss what engineers want to learn from the science and how the scientists may be able to provide the knowledge. Then, mathematical models will be presented with more biological plausibility. The hardware and system implementation will also be reported with the performance comparison with conventional methods for real-world complex applications. A panel will be organized for the future research directions at the end. This symposium will promote synergetic interaction among cognitive neuroscientists, neural networks and robotics engineers, and result in more biologically-plausible mathematical models and hardware systems with more human-like intelligent performance in real-world applications. 2. Organizers International Advisory Board Hyung Suck Cho, KAIST Chan-Sup Chung, Yonsei University Rodney Douglas, ETH Zurich Kunihiko Fukushima, Tokyo Univ. of Technology Mun Sang Kim, KIST Ho-Gil Lee, KITECH Sukhan Lee, Sungkyunkwan University Sang-Rok Oh, IITA Harold Szu, George Washington University Takeshi Yamakawa, Kyushu Inst. of Technology Hyun-Seung Yang, KAIST Donald C. Wunsch, University of Missouri Rolla Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University Symposium Co-Chairs Soo-Young Lee, Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST Yillbyung Lee, Director, Cognitive Science Research Center, Yonsei University Program Committee Chair: Rhee-Man Kil, KAIST Vice Chair: Minho Lee, Kyungpook National University Members: Allan Kardec Barros, Universidade Federal do Maranhao, Brazil Vladimir Cherkassky, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, USA Sung-Bae Cho, Yonsei University, Korea Young-Jo Cho, ETRI Yoonsuck Choe, Texas A&M University, USA Jin Young Choi,, Seoul National University, Korea Key-Sun.Choi, KAIST, Korea Seungjin Choi, Postech, Korea Andrzej Cichocki, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Wlodek Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna, Texas A&M University, USA Zhenya He, Southeast University, China Khan M. Iftekharuddin, University of Memphis, USA Giacomo Indiveri, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Cheongtag Kim, Seoul National University, Korea Dae-Shik Kim, Boston University, USA Ho Joon Kim, Handong University, Korea Sung-il Kim, Korea University, Korea Robert Kozma, University of Memphis, USA Dong-Soo Kwon, KAIST, Korea Daniel Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA Minho Lee, Kyungpook National University, Korea Sanghoon Lee, Seoul National University, Korea Seong-Whan Lee, Korea University, Korea Te-Won Lee, University of California - San Diego, USA Kichun Nam, Korea University, Korea Se-Young Oh, Postech, Korea Yong-Woon Park, ADD Giulio Sandini, University of Genoa, Italy Sebastian Seung, MIT, USA Jang-Kyoo Shin, Kyungpook National University, Korea Kwee-Bo Sim, Chungang University, Korea Harold Szu, George Washington University, USA Jun Tani , RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Jun Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Donald C. Wunsch, University of Missouri Rolla, USA Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University, China Mingsheng Zhao, Tsinghua University, China 3. Invited Speakers Kunihiko Fukushima, Tokyo University of Technology, Japan Visual Motion Analysis by a Neural Network Daniel D. Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA Invariant manifold recognition of facial expression Te-Won Lee, University of California - San Diego, USA Independent Vector Analysis Allan Kardec Barros, Universidade Federal do Maranhao, Brazil Redundancy reduction: a strategy employed by the brain for information processing? Sebastian Seung, MIT, USA Representing part-whole relationships in recurrent neural networks Jun Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Neurodynamic Optimization: Beyond of Convexity Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University, China Hierarchical Machine Learning - A learning methodology inspired by human's intelligence Mingsheng Zhao, Tsinghua University, China The TAF Neuron Model and Learning Algorithms for the TAF Neural Networks Wlodek Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Neurocognitive Approach to Computational Creativity Robert Kozma, University of Memphis, USA Dynamical Systems Approach to Intentional Robots Seiji Aoyagi, Department of Systems Management Engineering, Kansai University, Japan Recognition of Contact State by using Neural Network for Micromachined Array Type Tactile Sensor Giacomo Indiveri, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Multi-chip reconfigurable networks of VLSI spiking neurons with spike-based learning synapses Giulio Sandini, University of Genoa, Italy Humanoid babies Jun Tani, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Neuro-Cognitive Robotics: Experiments, Analysis and Interpretations Dae-Shik Kim, Boston University, USA Multiparametric Imaging of Brain Structure and Function Seung-Schik Yoo, Harvard Medical School, USA Brain-Computer-Interface using functional MRI: Thought-controlled Keyboard and Mouse 4. Intended Audience The symposium is aimed to be a high communicative forum for researchers from the cognitive neuroscience, artificial neural networks, and robotics communities. The presentation papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience, neural networks, and robotics communities. The members of the International Advisory Board and Program Committee had already agreed to submit their papers for the presentation. However, the submitted papers will be fully refereed by the Program Committee and accepted based on the quality of the papers. 5. Format The symposium will go on two full days with oral session with invited and contributed presentations, and one panel discussion session. To encourage exchange of ideas at least 20 minutes will be allocated for each talk with additional 10 minutes. The balance between the science and engineering will be made for the speakers and panelists. 6. Publicity The contributed papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience, neural networks, and robotics communities though public list servers. Also, a dedicated homepage (www.isabel2006.org, cnsl.kaist.ac.kr/isabel2006.htm) will be maintained, and several top researchers will be cordially invited through personal e-mails. The prospective authors are invited to submit one page summary by e-mail to isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr. Also, after acceptance, the presentation materials will be collected and made available to the attendees as a booklet. The extended version of the presented papers will be published as a special issue of the new online/offline journal, Neural Information Processing - Letters and Reviews (www.nip-lr.info), of which the Editor-in-Chief is the Symposium Chair.. 7. Important Dates May 20, 2006 Extended Deadline for Summary (1 page) June 20, 2006 Acceptance Notification July 20, 2006 Camera-ready notes due We wish to thank the followings for their contribution to the success of this conference: Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development International Neural Network Society From mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk Thu May 4 04:06:52 2006 From: mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk (Mark Plumbley) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 09:06:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP reminder: ICA Research Network International Workshop, Liverpool, UK, 18-19 Sept 2006 Message-ID: <9D47A2D30B0BFB4C920786C25EC6934574E8AC@staff-mail.vpn.elec.qmul.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists, For those of you working in ICA or source separation, a reminder that the abstract submission deadline for the ICA Research Network International Workshop is this Friday (5 May 2006). Best wishes, Mark Plumbley ----------------- *** CALL FOR PAPERS *** 2006 ICA Research Network International Workshop www.icarn.org Liverpool, UK 18 - 19 September 2006 +++ Abstract Submission Deadline: Fri 5 May 2006 +++ The ICA Research Network is sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the U.K., and is aimed at improving communications in the area of Blind Source Separation (BSS) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). The 2006 ICA Research Network International Workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool covering the latest developments and techniques in the area of BSS/ICA. Submissions from international participants are most welcome. Topics The workshop will feature keynote addresses and technical presentations (oral and poster), which will be included in the registration. Papers are solicited for, but not limited to, the following areas: * Algorithms and Architectures for BSS/ICA - Nonlinear ICA - Probabilistic Models - Sparse Coding - etc * Theory of BSS/ICA - Optimization - Complex Methods - Time-Frequency Representations - etc * Applications of BSS/ICA - Audio - Bio-Informatics - Biomedical Engineering - Communications - Finance - Image Processing - Psychology - Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA) - etc Extended Abstract Submission Procedure Prospective authors are invited to submit extended abstracts of no more than two A4-size pages, including: * Title * Authors' details * the work with contexts and * preliminary results (a Table or a Figure) Submission Please submit your extended abstract by e-mail (with a PDF attachment) with the subject "Extended Abstract Submission" to icarnw06 at liverpool.ac.uk. Full Paper Submission Procedure Authors of accepted extended abstracts will be invited to submit a paper of up to four pages in the PDF format. At least one author of each accepted paper must undertake to attend the workshop. Accepted papers will be published in a bound volume. Authors of the most innovative papers will be invited to submit substantially extended and updated versions of their papers for further review and possible publication in the International Journal of Neural Systems. Registration Costs (UK ?) Full Registration by 7 August 2006: ?165 After 7 August 2006: ?200 Student Registration by 7 August 2006: ?140 After 7 August 2006: ?165 Important Dates/Deadlines Submission of extended abstract 5 May 2006 Notification of acceptance 2 June 2006 Submission of camera-ready accepted paper 7 August 2006 Early registration and author registration 7 August 2006 Final date for registration 4 September 2006 Workshop 18-19 September 2006 Contact For more information visit www.icarn.org or email icarnw06 at liverpool.ac.uk ************************************************************** Professor A K Nandi David Jardine Chair of Signal Processing Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics The University of Liverpool Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, L69 3GJ, UK Tel: +44 151 794 4525 Fax: +44 151 794 4540 http://www.liv.ac.uk/eee/academicstaff/nandi.htm ************************************************************* --- Dr Mark D Plumbley Centre for Digital Music Department of Electronic Engineering Queen Mary University of London Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 7518 Fax: +44 (0)20 7882 7997 Email: mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/people/markp/ From Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr Thu May 4 06:17:12 2006 From: Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr (Elizabeth Thomas) Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 12:17:12 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: postdoc in Dijon France Message-ID: <4459D4A8.1060105@u-bourgogne.fr> We are seeking to recruit a postdoctoral fellow for projects concerning the use of artificial neural networks in gait analysis. The use of the network would permit an automatic classification of locomotive deficits as well as an understanding of the underlying physiological problem. The data to be studied will come from human patients suffering from arthritis as well as rat stroke models. A good candidate should be able to program (preferably in Matlab or C++) as well as be comfortable interacting with the medical and scientific community. The work will take place in an INSERM laboratory at the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France, specializing in locomotion. An emphasis will be placed on the publication of the results of this project and the methods developed during the course of it. The position will be funded for a year beginning in either September or December 2006, with the possibility of a second year. Dijon is a gastronomic centre in France, in the heart of the Burgundy wine area and one and a half hours away by train from Paris. Interested candidates, please send a CV to my e-mail address Elizabeth Thomas INSERM/ERM 207 Motricit?-Plasticit? : Performance, Dysfonctionnement, Vieillissement et Technologies d'optimisation. Campus Universitaire Fac. des Sciences du Sport BP 27877 F-21078 Dijon France Tel : 0033380396784 Fax : 0033380396702 Courriel : Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr visitez notre site web : www.u-bourgogne.fr/erm207 From giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it Thu May 4 10:01:26 2006 From: giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it (Giovanni Pezzulo) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 16:01:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: ABiALS Workshop 2006 Message-ID: (We apologize if you receive more than one copy of this message) ########################################################################### 2nd C A L L F O R P A P E R S ABiALS Workshop 2006 Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems ########################################################################### SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 ROME, ITALY http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ABiALS Contributions to ABiALS 2006 will be published in a re-reviewed, extended post-workshop proceedings volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series of Springer Verlag. ABiALS 2006 will be held during the ninth international conference on the SIMULATION of ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR (SAB 2006) http://www.sab06.org ABiALS is an interdisciplinary workshop investigating the influence of anticipations on behavior and learning. ABiALS is designed to help investigate how anticipations can influence, initiate, and guide behavior and learning as well as how anticipatory influences can be implemented in an adaptive learning system. Submission deadline: Wednesday, 15. JUNE 2006 Anticipatory behavior is a mechanism, or a behavior, that does not only depend on the past and present but also on predictions, expectations, or beliefs about the future. ___________________________________________________________________________ OBJECTIVES: After two previous successful gatherings during SAB 2002, resulting in the Springer-Verlag LNCS 2684 State-of-the-Art survey named after the workshop, and SAB2004, ABiALS 2006 will continue to explore anticipatory influences on behavior and learning. The aim of ABiALS 2006 is to join researchers in their understanding and development of anticipatory mechanisms in adaptive behavior. It is aimed for an interdisciplinary gathering that combines the expertise of researchers from various disciplines including neuroscience, cognitive psychology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, control, and vision research to shed further light on the concept of anticipation. Essentially, it will be discussed how knowledge about the future can influence actual behavioral mechanisms, including influences on attention, action decision making and control, as well as (behavioral and model) learning. ___________________________________________________________________________ KEY INTERESTS: Anticipatory mechanisms for model learning * Adaptive, predictive model learning * Adaptive, predictive filtering * Anticipatory attention * Surprise for model learning * Hierarchical, predictive model architectures * Timing in predictive models Model-predictive, adaptive control architectures * Inverse models and goal-oriented control * Hierarchical structures in adaptive, model-predictive control * Surprise in control * Delayed feedback, forward models, and multiply timed control Anticipatory, adaptive systems / agents * Integration of anticipatory adaptive processes in adaptive systems * Anticipatory decision making * Anticipatory behavior in multiagent systems * Interactions of anticipations, motivations, and emotions * Anticipations in BDI architectures * Curiosity and epistemic actions Distinctions of anticipatory mechanisms: * Benefits and drawbacks of different anticipatory mechanisms * Distinction to reactive mechanisms * Emergence of anticipatory mechanisms in evolution * Anticipatory mechanisms in constructivist, interactive frameworks Anticipatory mechanisms in animals and humans * Behavioral and cognitive anticipatory mechanisms in animals and humans * Anticipatory mechanisms in neuroscience * Anticipatory mechanisms in cognitive/experimental psychology ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBMISSION: Submissions for the workshop should address one of the interests listed above. The workshop is not limited to one particular type of anticipatory learning system or a particular representation of anticipations. The workshop will be generally targeted towards short presentations and extended discussions. The advantages and disadvantages of different anticipatory mechanisms and representations will be discussed in detail. Several discussion sessions on the topics in question will put the presentations into a broader perspective. Papers should be submitted electronically to one of the organizers via email in pdf or ps format. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. If you cannot submit your contribution electronically, please contact one of the organizers. Submitted papers should have a maximal length of ten pages in 10pt, one-column format. Please use the LNCS Springer-Verlag style as specified at http://www.springeronline.com/comp/lncs/authors.html (LATEX utilities can be found in the file llncs2e.zip). Papers will be reviewed for acceptance by the program committee and the organizers. Submission deadline is the 15th of JUNE 2006. Contributions to ABiALS 2006 will be published in an extended post-workshop proceedings volume in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence series (LNAI) (as was done for ABiALS 2002). For this, all papers will undergo a second review process. The proceedings will be further endowed with invited contributions by key researchers in the area. For further up-to-date information please refer to http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ABiALS/ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT DATES: 15. June 2006: Deadline for Submissions 30. September 2006: ABiALS Workshop 2006 ___________________________________________________________________________ PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Christian Balkenius Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden Edoardo Datteri Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Italy Pier Luca Lanzi Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Ralf Moeller Computer Engineering Group, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University, Germany Tony Prescott Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield, UK Jesse Reichler Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Alexander Riegler CLEA, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium Deb Roy Cognitive Machines Group, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA Samarth Swarup Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Stewart W. Wilson Prediction Dynamics, Concord, MA ___________________________________________________________________________ ORGANIZERS: Martin V. Butz, Department of Cognitive Psychology University of Wuerzburg, Germany Butz[a at t]psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/~butz Olivier Sigaud AnimatLab, University Paris VI, Paris, France olivier.sigaud[a at t]lip6.fr http://animatlab.lip6.fr/Sigaud Gianluca Baldassarre Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISTC-CNR) Roma, Italy gianluca.baldassarre[a at t]istc.cnr.it http://gral.istc.cnr.it/baldassarre/ Giovanni Pezzulo Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISTC-CNR) Roma, Italy giovanni.pezzulo[a at t]istc.cnr.it http://www.istc.cnr.it/createhtml.php?nbr=1 From david.barber at idiap.ch Fri May 5 06:02:51 2006 From: david.barber at idiap.ch (David Barber) Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 12:02:51 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Positions in Biologically Inspired Information Processing Message-ID: <08bd01c6702b$12277c00$4f21b280@davidbarber> Postdoc and PhD positions in biologically inspired information processing *************************************************************************************** The IDIAP Research Institute (www.idiap.ch) seeks immediately qualified candidates for PhD and Post-Doctoral positions in the field of bio-inspired information processing. The starting date is immediate, with competitive salaries. Current information extraction techniques perform well when event types are well represented in the training data but fail when encountering information-rich unexpected rare events. On the other hand, biological organisms rely for their survival on detecting and identifying new events. A new 5-year multi-site DIRAC project coordinated by IDIAP and funded by the European Community (8 partners in 5 countries), aims to move the art of machine information extraction from the classical signal processing/pattern classification paradigm to more human-like information extraction. IDIAP's current research emphasis in the project is mainly on human speech communication but the extension to other types of cognitive signals is likely. Please see www.diracproject.org for further details. The successful candidate will combine her/his excellent background in electrical engineering, physics or mathematics and have interests in biological information processing and machine learning. The successful candidate will work closely with Prof. Hynek Hermansky, an expert in acoustic processing, and Dr. Barber, an expert in machine learning and probabilistic models. Interested candidates should send a letter of motivation, along with their detailed CV and names of 3 references to jobs at idiap.ch. More information can also be obtained by contacting either Prof. Hynek Hermansky hynek.hermansky at idiap.ch or Dr. David Barber david.barber at idiap.ch Please read http://www.idiap.ch/pages/press/A_guide_to_IDIAP_Job_Applications_new.pdf for guidlines on the application procedure. --------------------------- IDIAP is an equal opportunity employer and is actively involved in the European initiative involving the Advancement of Women in Science. IDIAP seeks to maintain a principle of open competition (on the basis of merit) to appoint the best candidate, provides equal opportunity for all candidates, and equally encourages both genders to consider employment with IDIAP. IDIAP is located in the town of Martigny in Valais, a scenic region in the south of Switzerland, surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe, and offering exciting recreational activities, including hiking, climbing and skiing, as well as varied cultural activities. It is within close proximity to Geneva Lake and Lausanne. Although IDIAP is located in the French part of Switzerland, English is the main working language. Free English and French lessons are provided. From nq6 at columbia.edu Fri May 5 15:07:44 2006 From: nq6 at columbia.edu (Ning Qian) Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 15:07:44 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: preprints on movement duration and orientation models Message-ID: <445BA280.3060509@columbia.edu> Dear Colleagues, The pdf files for the following two preprints are available for download (see web address after each abstract below). Best regards, Ning Qian An Optimization Principle for Determining Movement Duration Hirokazu Tanaka, John Krakauer, and Ning Qian, /J. Neurophysiol./, 2006, in press. Abstract Movement duration is an integral component of motor control, but nearly all extant optimization models of motor planning pre-fix duration instead of explaining it. Here we propose a new optimization principle that predicts movement duration. The model assumes that the brain attempts to minimize movement duration under the constraint of meeting an accuracy criterion. The criterion is task and context dependent but is fixed for a given task and context. The model determines a unique duration as a tradeoff between speed (time optimality) and accuracy (acceptable end-point scatter). We analyzed the model for a linear motor plant, and obtained a closed-form equation for determining movement duration. By solving the equation numerically with specific plant-parameters for the eye and arm, we found that the model can reproduce saccade duration as a function of amplitude (the main sequence), and arm-movement duration as a function of the target-distance-to-size ratio (Fitts' law). In addition, it explains the dependence of peak saccadic speed on amplitude, and the dependence of saccadic duration on initial eye position. Furthermore, for arm movements, the model predicts a scaling relationship between peak velocity and distance, and a reduction in movement duration with a moderate increase in viscosity. Finally, for a linear plant, our model predicts a neural control signal identical to that of the minimum-variance model set to the same movement duration. This control signal is a smooth function of time (except at the end point), in contrast to the discontinuous bang-bang control found in the time-optimal-control literature. We suggest that one aspect of movement planning, as revealed by movement duration, may be to assign an end-point accuracy criterion for a given task and context. http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu/publications/min-time.pdf A Comparison among some Models of V1 Orientation Selectivity Andrew F. Teich and Ning Qian, /J. Neurophysiol./, 2006, in press. Abstract Several models exist for explaining V1 orientation tuning. The modified feedforward model (MFM) and the recurrent model (RM) are major examples. We have implemented, at the same level of detail, these two models alongside a few newer variations, and thoroughly compared their receptive-field structures. We found that anti-phase inhibition in the MFM enhances both spatial phase information and orientation tuning, producing well-tuned simple cells. This remains true for a newer version of the MFM that incorporates un-tuned complex-cell inhibition. In contrast, when the recurrent connections in the RM are strong enough to produce typical V1 orientation tuning, they also eliminate spatial phase information, making the cells complex. Introducing phase-specificity into the connections of the RM (as done in an original version of the RM) can make the cells phase sensitive, but the cells show an incorrect 90 deg peak-shift of orientation tuning under opposite contrast signs. An inhibition-dominant version of the RM can generate well-tuned cells across the simple/complex spectrum, but it predicts that the net effect of cortical interactions is to suppress feedforward excitation across all orientations in simple cells. Finally, adding anti-phase inhibition used in the MFM into the RM produces a most general model. We call this new model the modified recurrent model (MRM) and show that this model can also produce well-tuned cells throughout the simple/complex spectrum. Unlike the inhibition-dominant RM, the MRM is consistent with data from cat V1 suggesting that the net effect of cortical interactions is to boost simple cell responses at the preferred orientation. These results suggest that the MFM is well suited for explaining orientation tuning in simple cells, whereas the standard RM is for complex cells. The assignment of the RM to complex cells also avoids conflicts between the RM and the experiments of cortical inactivation (done on simple cells) and the spatial-frequency dependence of orientation tuning (found in simple cells). Since orientation-tuned V1 cells show a continuum of simple- to complex-cell behavior, the MRM provides the best description of V1 data. http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu/publications/orient-models.pdf -- Ning Qian, Ph. D. Associate Professor Ctr. Neurobiology & Behavior Columbia University / NYSPI Kolb Annex, Rm 519 1051 Riverside Drive, Box 87 New York, NY 10032, USA http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu nq6 at columbia.edu 212-543-6931 ext 600 (Office) 212-543-5816 (Fax) From jqc at tuebingen.mpg.de Fri May 5 05:50:51 2006 From: jqc at tuebingen.mpg.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Joaquin_Qui=F1onero_Candela?=) Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 11:50:51 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Gaussian Processes Message-ID: <445B1FFB.3080301@tuebingen.mpg.de> [apologies for multiple postings] Dear Connectionists, I am happy to announce the Workshop on Gaussian Processes in Practice Bletchley Park, U.K. 12th & 13th June 2006 http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/ml/gpip/ The submission deadline is Friday May 19th. It is our intention to create a post-proceedings for the workshop. Confirmed speakers include David MacKay Carl Rasmussen Ed Snelson Chris Williams Dieter Fox Aaron Hertzmann Raquel Urtasun Best regards, -- Joaquin Qui?onero Candela From drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Sat May 6 04:10:21 2006 From: drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk (David R. Hardoon) Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 09:10:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: Job announcement References: Message-ID: <4EF4D157-8726-4AA7-87FE-FB6A71B80426@ecs.soton.ac.uk> > University of Plymouth, United Kingdom > Faculty of Technology, Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music > Research > > Research Fellow in Neuroscience of Music > Salary: ?19340 to ?21640 per year, Research Fellow Scale > > Applications are invited for a two-year (24 months) Research Fellow > post in > the Faculty of Technology at the University of Plymouth, UK, > commencing on > 01 July 2006 (negotiable). > > This post will be part of a new EPSRC-funded research project aimed > at the > development of models and tools for the application of > probabilistic machine > learning techniques to the analysis of music and brain imaging data > on music > cognition, to be developed in collaboration with University College > London > (Prof. J. Shawe-Taylor), Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, > Germany (Prof. > H. Scheich) and Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria (Prof. G. > Widmer). > > Candidates for this post are expected to have experience with brain > data > (EEG and fMRI) collection, preparation and analysis. An > interdisciplinary > background linking Cognitive Sciences or Neuroscience, and Music, > and a > post-graduate degree on an allied discipline, are highly desirable. > > > More details about the this post can be found on the web pages at: > > http://neuromusic.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/jobs.html > > More information about computer music research at the University of > Plymouth > can be found at: > > http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk > > Informal enquiries may be made to Professor Eduardo R Miranda on e- > mail: > > eduardo.miranda at plymouth.ac.uk. > > > -------------- next part -------------- From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Tue May 9 04:35:02 2006 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 10:35:02 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volume 69 (issues 10-12) Message-ID: <44605436.5020005@science.ru.nl> Neurocomputing volume 69 (issues 10-12) ------- SPECIAL PAPERS (Computational Neuroscience: Trends in Research 2006 edited by Todd Troyer) Computational Neuroscience: Trends in Research 2006 (editorial) Todd Troyer The interaction between facilitation and depression of two release mechanisms in a single synapse Lian Zhou, Robert LoMauro and Farzan Nadim Intersymbol interference in axonal transmission Patrick Crotty and William B Levy The impact of the distribution of isoforms on CaMKII activation Malin Sandstr?m, Johannes Hjorth, Anders Lansner and Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski Properties and roles of BKCa channels in cultured cerebellar granule neuron: Experimental and simulation studies Marja-Leena Linne and Tuula O. Jalonen A realistic model of rod photoreceptor for use in a retina network model Rodrigo Publio, Rodrigo F. Oliveira and Antonio C. Roque Analysis of NMDA-dependent voltage bistability in thin dendritic compartments Maciej T. Lazarewicz, Chyze-Whee Ang, Gregory C. Carlson, Douglas A. Coulter and Leif H. Finkel Technique for eliminating nonessential components in the refinement of a model of dopamine neurons Sorinel A. Oprisan and Carmen C. Canavier A parallel and efficient algorithm for multicompartment neuronal modelling Yu Zhuang Genetic algorithm for optimization and specification of a neuron model W.C. Gerken, L.K. Purvis and R.J. Butera Reconstruction and simulation for three-dimensional morphological structure of insect neurons Takayuki Yamasaki, Teijiro Isokawa, Nobuyuki Matsui, Hidetoshi Ikeno and Ryohei Kanzaki Exploring gap junction location and density in electrically coupled hippocampal oriens interneurons F. Saraga, X.L. Zhang, L. Zhang, P.L. Carlen and F.K. Skinner The role of action potential shape and parameter constraints in optimization of compartment models Christina M. Weaver and Susan L. Wearne Dendritic cable with active spines: A modelling study in the spike-diffuse-spike framework Yulia Timofeeva, Gabriel J. Lord and Stephen Coombes Dependence of the spike-triggered average voltage on membrane response properties Laurent Badel, Wulfram Gerstner and Magnus J.E. Richardson A novel approach to model neuronal signal transduction using stochastic differential equations Tiina Manninen, Marja-Leena Linne and Keijo Ruohonen Altered sensory filtering and coding properties by synaptic dynamics in the electric sense Krisztina Szaliszny?, Andr? Longtin and Leonard Maler Temporal processing in the exponential integrate-and-fire model is nonlinear Joanna Pressley and Todd W. Troyer A simple model of spike processing Aurel A. Lazar Dual-matching as a problem solved by neurons Robert L. Fry Modeling single neuron behavior using stochastic differential equations Antti Saarinen, Marja-Leena Linne and Olli Yli-Harja Modelling self-sustained rhythmic activity in lamprey hemisegmental networks Mikael Huss, Lorenzo Cangiano and Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski Role of frequency-dependent weighing of inputs on frequency regulation of a pacemaker-driven rhythm Inbar Saraf-Sinik and Yair Manor Spatiotemporal clustering of synchronized bursting events in neuronal networks Uri Barkan and David Horn Predicting synchronized neural assemblies from experimentally estimated phase-resetting curves Roberto F. Gal?n, G. Bard Ermentrout and Nathaniel N. Urban Synchronization effects using a piecewise linear map-based spiking?bursting neuron model Carlos Aguirre, Doris Campos, Pedro Pascual and Eduardo Serrano Cycle-to-cycle variability as an optimal behavioral strategy Vladimir Brezina, Alex Proekt and Klaudiusz R. Weiss Effects of correlated input and electrical coupling on synchrony in fast-spiking cell networks Abraham R. Schneider, Timothy J. Lewis and John Rinzel Event-based simulation strategy for conductance-based synaptic interactions and plasticity Michelle Rudolph and Alain Destexhe Neuronal avalanches and criticality: A dynamical model for homeostasis David Hsu and John M. Beggs Real-time simulations of networks of Hodgkin?Huxley neurons using analog circuits Q. Zou, Y. Bornat, J. Tomas, S. Renaud and A. Destexhe Robust persistent activity in neural fields with asymmetric connectivity Cl?udia Horta and Wolfram Erlhagen A new mode beyond the inverted-U region of the dopaminergic modulation of the prefrontal cortex Shoji Tanaka, Hiroaki Ebi and Koki Yamashita Collective plasticity and individual stability in cultured neuronal networks Nadav Raichman, Vladislav Volman and Eshel Ben-Jacob Attractor dynamics in a modular network model of the cerebral cortex Mikael Lundqvist, Martin Rehn and Anders Lansner Rule-based firing for network simulations William W. Lytton and Mark Stewart A biophysical model of frequency-sweep selectivity in primary auditory cortex Christian H. Kasess, Calin I. Buia and Paul H.E. Tiesinga Locomotor network modeling based on identified zebrafish neurons Daniel P. Knudsen, John T. Arsenault, Scott A. Hill, Donald M. O?Malley and Jorge V. Jos? Reward-biased probabilistic decision-making: Mean-field predictions and spiking simulations Daniel Mart?, Gustavo Deco, Paolo Del Giudice and Maurizio Mattia Influence of the neural network topology on the learning dynamics Frank Emmert-Streib A self-organizing map with homeostatic synaptic scaling Thomas J. Sullivan and Virginia R. de Sa Parametric analysis of cerebellar LTD in eyelid conditioning Horatiu Voicu and Michael D. Mauk Model of auditory prediction in the dorsal cochlear nucleus via spike-timing dependent plasticity Patrick D. Roberts, Christine V. Portfors, Nathaniel Sawtell and Richard Felix II Dynamic regulation of spike-timing dependent plasticity in electrosensory processing Patrick D. Roberts, Gerardo Lafferriere, Nathaniel Sawtell, Alan Williams and Curtis C. Bell A temporal learning rule in recurrent systems supports high spatio-temporal stochastic interactions Thomas Wennekers and Nihat Ay Stimulus specificity of cortico-cortical connections optimizes information transmission Marcelo A. Montemurro and Stefano Panzeri Population coding of electrosensory stimulus in receptor network Kazuhisa Fujita and Yoshiki Kashimori Adaptive sensory processing for efficient place coding Denis Sheynikhovich, Ricardo Chavarriaga, Thomas Str?sslin and Wulfram Gerstner Analyzing the robustness of redundant population codes in sensory and feature extraction systems Christopher J. Rozell and Don H. Johnson Storing and restoring visual input with collaborative rank coding and associative memory Martin Rehn and Friedrich T. Sommer Receptive fields of simple cells from a taxonomic study of natural images and suppression of scale redundancy Jos? M. Delgado, Antonio Turiel and N?stor Parga Disambiguation in spatial navigation with theta phase coding Hiroaki Wagatsuma and Yoko Yamaguchi External activity and the freedom to recode William B Levy and Xiangbao Wu Decision functions that can support a hippocampal model Xiangbao Wu and William B Levy Gamma oscillations in a minimal CA3 model Ashlie B. Hocking and William B Levy Independent component analysis forms place cells in realistic robot simulations B?lint Tak?cs and Andr?s L?rincz Simulating place field dynamics using spike timing-dependent plasticity X. Yu, J.J. Knierim, I. Lee and H.Z. Shouval Place field dissociation and multiple maps in hippocampus David S. Touretzky and Robert U. Muller Model of CA1 place field formation with CA3 lesioned Kit D. Longden Stimulus competition by inhibitory interference Paul H.E. Tiesinga Joint maps for orientation, eye, and direction preference in a self-organizing model of V1 James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen Computational harmonic analysis for human and robotic vision systems Jacek Turski A model of proximity measurement by the teleost nucleus isthmi Brett J. Graham and David P.M. Northmore A two-dimensional population density approach to modeling the dLGN/PGN network Marco A. Huertas and Gregory D. Smith Prenatal development of ocular dominance and orientation maps in a self-organizing model of V1 Stefanie Jegelka, James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen Optimal contour integration: When additive algorithms fail Nadja Schinkel, Klaus R. Pawelzik and Udo A. Ernst A statistical basis for visual field anisotropies Neil D.B. Bruce and John K. Tsotsos Associative memory of connectivity patterns Junmei Zhu and Christoph von der Malsburg Self-organization of hierarchical visual maps with feedback connections Yiu Fai Sit and Risto Miikkulainen Extraction of an activity pattern language from EEG data Peter Andras Neurodynamical approach to the picture?word interference effect Franziska Koepke, Marco Loh, Albert Costa and Gustavo Deco A model of dual control mechanisms through anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex interactions Nicola De Pisapia and Todd S. Braver A model to explain the emergence of reward expectancy neurons using reinforcement learning and neural network Shinya Ishii, Munetaka Shidara and Katsunari Shibata Computational and neural mechanisms of task switching Jeremy R. Reynolds, Todd S. Braver, Joshua W. Brown and Stefan Van der Stigchel Phase analysis of single-trial EEGs: Phase resetting of alpha and theta rhythms Won Sup Kim and Seung Kee Han Modelling ECT effects by connectivity changes in cortical neural networks Y. Gu, G. Halnes, H. Liljenstr?m, D. von Rosen, B. Wahlund and H. Liang Brain mechanisms for interleaving routine and creative action Alan H. Bond A computational model of anterior intraparietal (AIP) neurons Erhan Oztop, Hiroshi Imamizu, Gordon Cheng and Mitsuo Kawato Methods for finding and validating neural spike patterns J. Vincent Toups and Paul H.E. Tiesinga Smoothing and thresholding in neuronal spike detection Nhamoinesu Mtetwa and Leslie S. Smith Comparison of automated parameter estimation methods for neuronal signaling networks Antti Pettinen, Olli Yli-Harja and Marja-Leena Linne A segmentation algorithm for zebra finch song at the note level Ping Du and Todd W. Troyer A spike sorting framework using nonparametric detection and incremental clustering Mingzhou (Joe) Song and Hongbin Wang Deficiencies in traditional measures of in vitro hippocampal rhythms J.A. Gillis, L. Zhang and F.K. Skinner ------- JOURNAL SITE: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom SCIENCE DIRECT: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5660-2006-999309989-622193 From wduch at is.umk.pl Tue May 9 06:35:43 2006 From: wduch at is.umk.pl (Wlodzislaw Duch) Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 12:35:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Papers on computational creativity and semantic memory for avatars Message-ID: <001b01c67354$53071ce0$6401a8c0@duchnote> Dear Connectionist, your comments on the following papers will be appreciated: =============================================== Duch W (2006) Creativity and the Brain. A Handbook of Creativity for Teachers. Ed. Ai-Girl Tan (forthcoming) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Creativity-Brain.html Neurocognitive approach to higher cognitive functions that bridges the gap between psychological and neural level of description is introduced. Relevant facts about the brain, working memory and representation of symbols in the brain are summarized. Putative brain processes responsible for problem solving, intuition, skill learning and automatization are described. The role of non-dominant brain hemisphere in solving problems requiring insight is conjectured. Two factors seem to be essential for creativity: imagination constrained by experience, and filtering that selects most interesting solutions. Experiments with paired words association are analyzed in details and evidence for stochastic resonance effects is found. Brain activity in the process of invention of novel words is proposed as the simplest way to understand creativity using experimental and computational means. Perspectives on computational models of creativity are discussed. =============================================== Duch W (2006) Computational Creativity. World Congres on Computational Intelligence, Vancouver, 16-21 July 2006 (in print) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Creativity.html Creative thinking is one of the hallmarks of human-level competence. Although it is still a poorly understood subject speculative ideas about brain processes involved in creative thinking may be implemented in computational models. A review of different approaches to creativity, insight and intuition is presented. Two factors are essential for creativity: imagination and selection or filtering. Imagination should be constrained by experience, while filtering in the case of creative use of words may be based on semantic and phonological associations. Analysis of brain processes involved in invention of new words leads to practical algorithms that create many interesting and novel names associated with a set of keywords. =============================================== Szymanski J, Sarnatowicz T, Duch W (2006) Towards Avatars with Artificial Minds: Role of Semantic Memory. Journal of Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligence, American Scientific Publishers (in print) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Avatars.html The first step towards creating avatars with human-like artificial minds is to give them human-like memory structures with an access to general knowledge about the world. This type of knowledge is stored in semantic memory. Although many approaches to modeling of semantic memories have been proposed they are not very useful in real life applications because they lack knowledge comparable to the common sense that humans have, and they cannot be implemented in a computationally efficient way. The most drastic simplification of semantic memory leading to the simplest knowledge representation that is sufficient for many applications is based on the Concept Description Vectors (CDVs) that store, for each concept, an information whether a given property is applicable to this concept or not. Unfortunately even such simple information about real objects or concepts is not available. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources are described. Haptek-based talking head that has an access to this memory has been created as an example of a humanized interface (HIT) that can interact with web pages and exchange information in a natural way. A few examples of applications of an avatar with semantic memory are given, including the twenty questions game and automatic creation of word puzzles. =============================================== Duch W, Szymanski J, Sarnatowicz T (2005) Concept description vectors and the 20 question game. Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining, Advances in Soft Computing, Springer Verlag (2005) 41-50 http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/05-CDV20Q.html Knowledge of properties that are applicable to a given object is a necessary prerequisite to formulate intelligent question. Concept description vectors provide simplest representation of this knowledge, storing for each object information about the values of its properties. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources, are described. Information collected in this way is used to formulate questions that have high discriminating power in the twenty questions game. =============================================== More papers may be found at: http://www.is.umk.pl/~duch/cv/papall.html Comparison of classification results and logical rules extracted from many datasets: http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/kmk/projects/datasets.html With best regards, Wlodzislaw Duch ______________________________________________________ Prof. Wlodzislaw Duch Dept. of Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland; School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Google: Duch From l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de Wed May 10 11:34:59 2006 From: l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 17:34:59 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Bernstein Award 2006 Message-ID: <17506.2083.620759.498715@huxley.biologie.hu-berlin.de> Dear All, I would like to draw your attention to the Bernstein Award, which offers a superb research opportunity for excellent young researchers in the field of Computational Neuroscience. Please forward to promising candidates. Laurenz Wiskott. ============================================================================== Bernstein Award 2006 - Young Scientists Research Award in Computational Neuroscience The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has established the National Network for Computational Neuroscience with four high-performing Bernstein Centers for Computational Neuroscience as the major structural elements. The "Bernstein Award" is equipped with up to 1.250 Mio Euro in the form of a grant over a period of five years. It will be awarded to a highly qualified young researcher, considering the candidates' verifiable research profile in the field of computational neuroscience and the scientific concept for a future young research group. Young researchers can apply for their own position and group. The group funded by the Bernstein Award will become an integral part of the National Network for Computational Neuroscience. Future announcements of the Bernstein-Award are in the scope of the Ministry's planning. The grant is provided for a scientific project of a young research group headed by a postdoc regardless of nationality. The project will be conducted at a German university or research institution within or outside the Bernstein Centers. It is a prerequisite for funding that the university or research institution concerned employs the young researcher during the funding period and supports him/her with the basic equipment in terms of laboratory space and other infrastructure. A statement made to that effect by the receiving institution must be included with the project outline to be submitted. Deadline for applications is June 30th, 2006. For more detailed information about the Bernstein Centers and the Bernstein-Award including application conditions please visit www.bernstein-zentren.de/en/index.php www.bernstein-zentren.de/en/278.php ============================================================================== From juergen at idsia.ch Wed May 10 05:43:08 2006 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:43:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Music & Machine Learning: Sarntal Course Sept 17-29 Message-ID: <7d73de1cef8377787bfd321807958c28@idsia.ch> Music, Interactive Conducting, and Machine Learning A two-week course in the beautiful Sarntal, Sept 17-29, 2006 Overview. In exciting theoretical and practical sessions we will apply machine learning techniques to problems related to music, and use augmented reality techniques to construct a virtual orchestra. Gifted students of TU Muenchen, Univ. Erlangen-Nuernberg, Univ. Stuttgart are encouraged to apply. Possible group projects include: 1. Automatic music classification through the universal distance measure 2. Learning musical taste through boosting methods 3. Learning to compose music through recurrent neural nets 4. Gesture recognition for conductor patterns 5. Sibelius Interface: simultaneous musical score and video/audio of orchestra 6. Low Latency Home Conductor: thin client (notebook with camera) operates via WWW on a network of music processors 7. Tracking the conductor's eye - only the viewed instrument reacts to gestures Lecturers: Prof. Bernd Br?gge, TUM, Germany Prof. J?rgen Schmidhuber, TUM Prof. Asim Smailagic, CMU, USA Guest: Key-Thomas M?rkl, Bavarian Symphonic Orchestra Instructions and more: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/sarntal.html From M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 12 12:50:36 2006 From: M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk (M.Casey@surrey.ac.uk) Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 17:50:36 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information Fusion: Extended Deadline - Final Call Message-ID: Due to increasing demand and the usual time pressures, please note the revised deadlines for student paper submissions (5 June) and discussion abstracts (3 July). To secure accommodation, participants are still advised to register by the 15 May due to the high demand during the summer period. My apologies if you receive multiple copies of this e-mail. ============================================================================================ International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information Fusion Second Call for Contributions Tuesday 22 August - Wednesday 23 August 2006, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ias/workshops/biif/ ============================================================================================ We invite contributions to an international workshop on biologically inspired information fusion. The workshop is designed to bring together complementary researchers in the broad areas of computer science, engineering, psychology and biology who have an interest in the multi-disciplinary aspects of information fusion. The programme consists of tutorials from discipline leaders, discussions, and research student poster and oral presentations. Contributions are being sought for the discussion sessions and research student presentations from all of the target disciplines: computer science, engineering, psychology and biology. Confirmed tutorial guests include: Professor Barry Stein, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine Dr Gemma Calvert, Multisensory Research Group in the Department of Psychology, University of Bath ============================================================================================ Natural and Artificial Multi-sensory Processing The ability to process, interpret and act upon sensory information is perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of human and animal cognition. Our sensory systems process large volumes of information at different scales in short periods of time, far out-performing current artificial systems, which struggle to usefully process just a single modality of information. For example, whereas speech recognition systems have achieved real-time continuous operation, artificial systems, designed for vision or olfaction are far less advanced, yet the combination of different information sources, or senses, may help overcome some of the processing limitations. This disparity between natural and artificial cognitive systems has been recognised in the recent UK Foresight Cognitive Systems Review, which suggests that our understanding of both natural and artificial systems of sensory processing can be achieved through collaboration between life and physical scientists. About the Workshop The workshop is sponsored by the University of Surrey's Institute of Advanced Studies. The aim is to promote collaboration between disciplines to develop an understanding of how to build adaptive information fusion systems by improving our knowledge from both natural and artificial systems research. The programme is designed to facilitate a cross-discipline understanding of multi-sensory fusion, with discussions on key topics and future directions, and presentation of current ideas. This is to be achieved through tutorials from leaders in each of the target disciplines, brainstorming and debate sessions lead by relevant researchers, and both oral and poster presentations from research students. Example topics include, but are not limited to: Sensory and multi-sensory processing: neurobiology, behaviour, computational modelling and artificial sensors - Vision, audition, olfaction, taste, touch - Attention: pre-attention or task-driven attention - Emotional bias on senses - Artificial sensors Information fusion and multi-modal systems: - Computer vision, speech processing, gesture recognition - Sensor fusion - Multiple regressor or classifier systems - Biometrics, human-computer interaction, intelligent systems - Bio-logically inspired robotics ============================================================================================ Discussions Topics for the discussion sessions should aim to promote new or controversial ideas, perhaps posing unanswered questions related to the workshop. These should be in the form of abstracts (maximum 500 words) stating the key topic of discussion and highlighting possible solutions and current points of view. Proposals for debates, where two participants offer their point of view prior to discussion, should be clearly highlighted. All contributions will be peer reviewed by the workshop programme committee. Those with accepted topics will be invited to give a 10 minute presentation of their idea. For sessions focused around a debate, both participants will be invited to present their ideas in a 10 minute slot each, prior to discussion. An open brainstorming session will then follow for 50 minutes with a focus on initially evaluating the proposed idea or giving thoughts on unanswered questions. Notes and outcomes of these sessions will be recorded. Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk by the deadline: 3 July 2006. ============================================================================================ Student Presentations Papers are invited from research students only to promote discussion of new ideas and to foster training and development of new researchers. All papers will be peer reviewed by the workshop programme committee to assess originality, significance, quality and clarity. Those students with accepted papers will be invited to either present a poster or to give a 20 minute oral presentation. Papers should not exceed 6 pages in length, including references, tables, figures and appendices, and should follow the LNCS format, details of which can be found at http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,3-164-2-72376-0,00.html. Papers should be submitted via e-mail to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk by the deadline: 5 June 2006. ============================================================================================ Enquiries regarding abstract and paper submission should be directed to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk. Abstracts and papers will be available to workshop attendees via the website and printed proceedings. After the workshop, participants will be invited to submit papers based upon their work to two journal special issues (journals to be confirmed). These will contain a mixture of review/discussion articles and presentations of current research work. ============================================================================================ Important Dates 5 June 2006 Deadline for submitting student papers 3 July 2006 Notification of acceptance of student papers 3 July 2006 Deadline for submitting discussion abstracts 31 July 2006 Camera ready student papers 31 July 2006 Notification of acceptance of discussion abstracts 22-23 August 2006 Workshop at the University of Surrey Guests looking for accommodation on campus (the cheapest in Guildford) are advised to register by the 15 May 2006. Otherwise, registration is open up until the workshop. For papers to be presented at the workshop, all guests must be registered by the 31 July 2006 to secure a place on the programme. Further information can be obtained from: - Website: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ias/workshops/biif/ - Enquiries about paper submission: biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk - General and administrative enquiries: Mrs Gautier O'Shea, S.Gautier at surrey.ac.uk; Mrs Heather Norman, H.Norman at surrey.ac.uk - Dr Matthew Casey, M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk; tel. +44 (0)1483 689635 - Dr Paul Sowden, P.Sowden at surrey.ac.uk - Dr Hujun Yin, Hujun.Yin at manchester.ac.uk - Dr Tony Browne, A.Browne at surrey.ac.uk From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Sat May 13 04:38:51 2006 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 09:38:51 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder and Venue Change: Gatsby Annual Seminar In-Reply-To: <20060421144404.GF3517@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> References: <20060113094900.GC23422@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <20060421144404.GF3517@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20060513083851.GA2124@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> There has been a change in venue for the Gatsby Unit Annual Seminar which is happening this Wednesday. It will take place in the Leolin Price Lecture Theatre, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, very close to Queen Square. 17 May 2006 2.30pm Gatsby Unit Annual Seminar We are delighted to announce the first in an annual series of Gatsby Seminars, with talks by distinguished researchers in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. This year's talks will be given by Dr Li Zhaoping, from the Dept of Psychology at UCL, and Prof John Shawe-Taylor, from the Dept of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. They will be held at 2.30pm in the Leolin Price Lecture Theatre at the ICH, and will be followed by a wine reception at 5.00pm at The Gatsby Unit, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square Titles and abstracts below. All are welcome. --------------------------------------------- 2.30pm: Dr Li Zhaoping The More Briefly one Looks, the More Effectively one `Sees': Vision by V1 I show that a visual search task can be better performed when one views the search array for a shorter time, and suggest an account of this phenomenon based on an analysis of V1's contribution to vision. The cost of a prolonged view comes from the interference of higher level object recognition on lower level image feature processing. A similar effect underlies the trick for art novices of drawing a portrait upside down in order to reproduce lower level image features, such as contours, with less interference from higher level face cognition. In our task, the search target has an uniquely oriented bar but is identical in shape to distractors. Lower level image feature processes enable the unique orientation to pop out, attracting gaze towards the target. Subsequently, higher level object processes, involving focused attention, recognize the target object in a viewpoint invariant manner, confusing the target as being a distractor and interfering with the task. Lower and higher processes lead to their respective behavioural decisions manifested in eye movements and ultimate task performances. I will show physiological and computational evidence implicating V1 mechanisms for the lower level feature pop out, and review data about higher object processes in higher brain areas. 3.45pm: Prof John Shawe-Taylor Inferring Semantic Representations from Data The talk addresses the question of how effectively we can learn underlying semantics from data. We concentrate on text analysis as a domain where semantics are relatively cleanly defined and on which learning approaches have made significant advances. The links between Latent Semantic Indexing, Latent Semantic Kernels and kernel Principal Components Analysis are discussed and the generalisation of such representations is discussed. Cross-lingual information retrieval suggests the use of Canonical Correlation Analysis as a Semantic inference tool. Again a kernel version can be defined and with appropriate regularisation applied in high-dimensional feature spaces. Applications of the same approach to non-text data will also be presented. ------------------------------------------ From oby at cs.tu-berlin.de Tue May 16 07:50:13 2006 From: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de (Klaus Obermayer) Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 13:50:13 +0200 (MEST) Subject: Connectionists: MSc in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, attached please find the announcement of a new Master program in Computational Neuroscience. Cheers Klaus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer phone: 49-30-314-73442 FR2-1, NI, Fakultaet IV 49-30-314-73120 Technische Universitaet Berlin fax: 49-30-314-73121 Franklinstrasse 28/29 e-mail: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de 10587 Berlin, Germany http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/ ======================================================================== International Master of Science in Computational Neuroscience Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Germany The Berlin University of Technology, the Charite Medical School and the Humboldt University of Berlin solicit applications for a new international Master program in Computational Neuroscience within the newly established Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (http://www.cns-berlin.org/). The program is full-time for four semesters, and will start in October 2006. Course language is English. There are no tuition fees. Computational neuroscience is a new research discipline, which reflects the fact that understanding the functioning brain requires a multidisciplinary approach. It combines experiments with data analysis and computer simulations on the basis of well-defined theoretical concepts, and makes a scientific language available that can be used across disciplines and levels for neurobiology, cognitive science, and information technology. Computational Neuroscience may thus help to solve long-standing research questions, contribute to better prevention and treatment strategies for neural disorders, lead to unified concepts about biological processes, advance information technologies and human-machine interactions and, last but not least, provide new insight for designing efficient strategies for teaching and learning. The MSc program in Computational Neuroscience will provide students with knowledge and skills in a wide range of theoretical techniques which are under intensive use in the Neurosciences and which are also at the core of modern AI and machine learning research. During the first year, modules on -- Models of Neural Systems -- Models of Higher Brain Function -- Acquisition and Analysis of Neural Data -- Machine Intelligence jointly taught by experimentalists and theoreticians will lay the disciplinary foundation. During the second year extensive experimental and theoretical project work: -- lab rotations -- Master thesis will train the students' ability to conduct scientific research. Emphasis will be put on a broad, interdisciplinary education with strong interactions between experiment and theory. The program is taught by the faculty of the Bernstein Center, who represent university departments ranging from biology and medicine to physics and computer science at the three major universities in Berlin. Application deadline: June 16th, 2006 for the winter term 2006/2007. Students with a a solid mathematical background and a completed B.Sc. or equivalent degree (completed at the time the courses start) are welcome to apply. For more information and application procedures see www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de or send email to sekr at cs.tu-berlin.de. Admission for the winter term 2006/2007 depends on the final approval of the program by the Senatsverwaltung f?r Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur. From oby at cs.tu-berlin.de Tue May 16 12:48:21 2006 From: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de (Klaus Obermayer) Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:48:21 +0200 (MEST) Subject: Connectionists: new SVM software available Message-ID: Dear All, I would like to announce a fast SMO implementation of the P-SVM, a new SVM method for dyadic data. The software is available for downloading via the web-address: http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/software/ using the link "PSVM". The P-SVM is described in detail in the recent publication: S. Hochreiter and K. Obermayer, Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data, Neural Computation 18, 1472-1510. An abstract is attached. All the best Klaus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data S. Hochreiter & K. Obermayer We describe a new technique for the analysis of dyadic data, where two sets of objects ("row" and "column" objects) are characterized by a matrix of numerical values which describe their mutual relationships. The new technique, called "Potential Support Vector Machine" (P-SVM), is a large-margin method for the construction of classifiers and regression functions for the "column" objects. Contrary to standard support vector machine approaches, the P-SVM minimizes a scale-invariant capacity measure and requires a new set of constraints. As a result, the P-SVM method leads to a usually sparse expansion of the classification and regression functions in terms of the "row" rather than the "column" objects and can handle data and kernel matrices which are neither positive definite nor square. We then describe two complementary regularization schemes. The first scheme improves generalization performance for classification and regression tasks, the second scheme leads to the selection of a small, informative set of "row" "support" objects and can be applied to feature selection. Benchmarks for classification, regression, and feature selection tasks are performed with toy data as well as with several real world data sets. The results show, that the new method is at least competitive with but often performs better than the benchmarked standard methods for standard vectorial as well as for true dyadic data sets. In addition, a theoretical justification is provided for the new approach. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer phone: 49-30-314-73442 FR2-1, NI, Fakultaet IV 49-30-314-73120 Technische Universitaet Berlin fax: 49-30-314-73121 Franklinstrasse 28/29 e-mail: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de 10587 Berlin, Germany http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/ From l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de Wed May 17 09:21:24 2006 From: l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 15:21:24 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD-Student or Postdoc position in Computational Neuroscience at the ITB in Berlin Message-ID: <17515.9044.778030.170627@huxley.biologie.hu-berlin.de> Please forward this job advertisement to students who might be interested. Thanks, Laurenz Wiskott. ___________________________________________________________________________ Open Position for a PhD-Student or Postdoc in Computational Neuroscience at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~wiskott/jobs.html ___________________________________________________________________________ Institute: Institute for Theoretical Biology Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin Invalidenstra?e 43 D-10115 Berlin, Germany http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/ The Institute for Theoretical Biology is a young and dynamic lab with three full professors, four junior research groups, and about 60 students and researchers doing interdisciplinary and innovative research in different areas of theoretical biology. Research group: The position is available in the junior research group led by Dr. Laurenz Wiskott and is funded by the BMBF through the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin. Research topics: The goal of this project is to build a model of the visual system based on the ideas of slow feature analysis with particual emphasis on questions of attentional control. The project is part of a collaboration with the experimental group of Dr. Stephan Brandt at the Charit? Medical School in Berlin. Teaching: There will be some duties as a teaching assistant, e.g. for the basic mathematics courses. Time: The position will be available September 2006. A different starting date might be negotiable. The appointment will be for 1+2 years. Requirements: Candidates should have an education in physics, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering or any related field. Required are strong mathematical and programming skills as well as the ability to communicate and work well in a team. Candidates who have not worked in the field of computational neuroscience yet are also encouraged to apply. Salary: Salary will be BAT IIa-O (part time for a PhD student) and will depend on age and family status. BAT is the regular salary scale for public employees in Germany. Inquiries: Informal inquiries can be addressed to Dr. Laurenz Wiskott . Application: Complete applications should be sent to Dr. Laurenz Wiskott at the address given above. Please send only copies and not original documents, since the applications will not be sent back. You can also send applications via email, but please make sure they are complete and in a convenient format. Handicapped applicants with corresponding qualifications will be considered preferentially. To increase the proportion of female scientists, applications of qualified females are especially welcome. Deadline: None. Application will be accepted until the position is filled, as will be indicated on the web-page of this job advertisement; see below. WWW: The following web page contains additional information: http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~wiskott/jobs.html. From stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk Wed May 17 10:13:15 2006 From: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk (Stefan Wermter) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 15:13:15 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Job: Postdoctoral Research Scientist Neuro-Robotics Message-ID: <446B2F7B.10207@sunderland.ac.uk> Job announcement: Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Neuro-Robotics School of Computing & Technology, University of Sunderland Research Scientist Neuro-Robotics (MICRAM) Fixed term ? three years 19,340 - 29,211 pounds per annum Ref: CTR016/1154 Our focus in the MICRAM project is to develop and validate biomimetic robots, computational neural models and a neuroscience database for the development of a biologically realistic model of auditory processing (MICRAM project). The job involves the development of a biomimetic robot that uses neural computational modeling to simulate the auditory midbrain. You should be educated to PhD level or possess equivalent research experience and a proven ability in research and publication. A degree in a computing discipline is essential and knowledge of biomimetic robotics is desirable. Experience with GENESIS or similar neural modelling and knowledge of the auditory system and of bioacoustics would be advantageous. This neuro-robotics post is part of a collaboration between the University of Sunderland (neural robotics post -- this announcement) and the University of Newcastle (auditory neuroscience post -- to be announced). For more info on the Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems see http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ For informal discussions of this neuro-robotics post please contact Dr. Harry Erwin ( harry.erwin at sunderland.ac.uk ) or Prof. Stefan Wermter ( stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk ). Interviews for this post will be held on Monday 19th June 2006. Application form and Role Profile can be obtained by contacting Human Resources on 0191 515 2057 or www.sunderland.ac.uk/jobs Closing Date: 2nd June 2006 *************************************** Stefan Wermter Professor for Intelligent Systems Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems School of Computing and Technology University of Sunderland St Peters Way Sunderland SR6 0DD United Kingdom email: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0stw/ http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ **************************************** From ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp Wed May 17 03:30:58 2006 From: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp (Masumi Ishikawa) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 16:30:58 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP for BrainIT2006 Message-ID: <6.0.0.20.2.20060517162633.023a3c70@mail.brain.kyutech.ac.jp> 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS Welcome to BrainIT 2006 The third international conference, BrainIT 2006, will be held in Kitakyushu, Japan, on September 27-29, 2006, in order to establish the foundations of the Brain-Inspired Information Technology. All working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology including Robotics are invited to participate in the third international conference, BrainIT 2006. At this conference, we will organize special sessions on the results of our COE research program in addition to invited papers from a wide range of fields from Brain Science to Information Technology. INVITED SPEAKERS Special Session Mitsuo Kawato (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Japan) Invited Sessions Asla Pitkanen (University of Kuopio, Finland) Andreas G. Andreou (Johns Hopkins University, USA) Helge Ritter (Bielefeld University, Germany) Rodney Douglas (University/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Yoshihiko Nakamura (The University of Tokyo, Japan) Lamp Session Ryohei Kanzaki (The University of Tokyo, Japan) IMPORTANT DATES Abstract (for presentation) Submission Deadline: June 12, 2006 Notification of Acceptance: July 14, 2006 Early Registration Deadline: September 5, 2006 SCOPE AND TOPICS BrainIT 2006 solicits experimental, computational, theoretical as well as engineering papers related to the topics in the following non-exhaustive, non-exclusive categories. Categories: 1. Vision systems 2. Other sensory systems 3. Cognition?& Languages 4. Learning and Memory 5. Behavior & Emotion 6. Motor controls 7. Dynamics 8. Neural computation 9. Neural networks 10.Brain-inspired intelligent machines Papers that bridge brain science and information technology are especially welcome. Regular papers may include speculative discussions on Brain-Inspired Information Technology. BrainIT 2006 is open to all working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology (modeling and hardware realization) and provides the opportunity for presenting and discussing ideas that pave the way for the new field, Brain-Inspired Information Technology. Instructions for Authors Authors for poster presentation must submit a 1-page A4-sized abstract electronically via our web site, though submissions by e-mail are also available. Only PDF files are acceptable.?Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two reviewers.?Abstracts selected by reviewers are asked to present in a Selected Paper Session, an oral session. BrainIT2006 will publish an edited book as before. For further information, please refer to our web site. Registration Registration is free of charge. However, we recommend your early registration as the number of abstract books and other materials may be limited. Sponsors - "World of brain computing interwoven out of animals and robots": The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan - Kyushu Institute of Technology - Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute (FLSI) - Kitakyushu Foundation for the Advancement of Industry, Science and Technology (FAIS) Contact us Secretariat: Tetsuo FURUKAWA, PhD, Professor Phone: +81-93-695-6124, Fax: +81-93-695-6134 E-mail: secretariat at brain-it.brain.kyutech.ac.jp For more information, please visit our web site: http://conf.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/~brain-it/ Masumi Ishikawa Department of Brain Science and Engineering Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering Kyushu Institute of Technology 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu 808-0196, Japan Tel and Fax: +81-93-695-6106 Email: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp URL: http://www.brain.kyutech.ac.jp/~ishikawa URL: http://www.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/ From Randy.OReilly at colorado.edu Fri May 19 13:41:43 2006 From: Randy.OReilly at colorado.edu (Randall C. O'Reilly) Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 11:41:43 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: CCNC Conference: Extended Deadline & Submission Website Avail In-Reply-To: <200604142347.38871.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> References: <200604142347.38871.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> Message-ID: <200605191141.43513.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> Updates: * The deadline for submission has been extended to June 15, 2006 * The website for submitting is now operational: http://www.conference.org/page5.html * We are planning a special issue of the newly reorganized Brain Research journal for papers from this meeting -- indicate interest with your abstract submission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Call for Abstracts ~ 2ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE www.ccnconference.org To be held in conjunction with the 2006 PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY CONFERENCE, November 16-19, 2006 at the Hilton Americas hotel in Houston, TX. * CONFERENCE DATES: Wed-Thu November 15 & 16, 2006 The inaugural CCNC 2005 meeting held prior to Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in Washington DC was a great success with approximately 250 attendees 60 presented posters and strongly positive reviews. In future years it will continue to be held on a rotating basis with other meetings such as (tentative list): Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) and Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: June 15, 2006 (EXTENDED) Abstracts to be submitted online via the website: www.ccnconference.org/page5.html Like last year, there will be two categories of submissions: -Poster only -Poster, plus short talk (15 min) to highlight the poster Abstracts should be no more than 500 words. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing for posters will be inclusive and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Short talks will be selected on the basis of research quality relevance to conference theme and expected accessibility in a talk format. Abstracts not selected for short talks will still be accepted as posters as long as they meet appropriateness criteria. * NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: July 15, 2005 (NEW DATE) __________________________________________________________________________ Preliminary Program: * 2006 Keynote Speakers (confirmed): Mike Kahana, University of Pennsylvania Mark Seidenberg, University of Wisconsin Madison * 3 Symposia, selected from submitted proposals, that will be discussion oriented and include a mixture of modelers and non-modelers, all focused on a common theme or issue. * 12 short talks featuring selected posters * Poster sessions ___________________________________________________________________________ 2006 Planning Committee: Suzanna Becker, McMaster University Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado, Boulder David Noelle, Vanderbilt University Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown University Medical Center Executive Organizer: Thomas Hazy, University of Colorado, Boulder For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit: www.ccnconference.org From crismin at cs.toronto.edu Sat May 20 06:40:04 2006 From: crismin at cs.toronto.edu (Cristian Sminchisescu) Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 06:40:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: Summer visitor internships in Computer Vision, Neural Processing and Machine Learning, TTI-Chicago In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, Please find below an advertisement for research-oriented internships available in the area of Computer Vision (with emphasis on neural processing and machine learning) at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Thank you for considering this and best regards, Cristian Sminchisescu ============================================================================ SUMMER VISITOR INTERNSHIPS TOYOTA TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE AT CHICAGO (TTI-C) A number of summer visitor internships are available in the area of Computer Vision, Neural Processing and Machine Learning at the TTI-C institute (www.tti-c.org) inside the University of Chicago, USA, during the period May 15th-October 15th 2006. These internships are only available to (typically advanced) PhD. students at US universities (e.g. F-1 students or any students who already are in possession of a legal document to study / work in the US). There are possibilities for longer or shorter stages (> 3 months), depending on the candidate. The visiting interns will work, together with Dr. Cristian Sminchisescu (http://tti.uchicago.edu/~crismin), on projects related to general visual processing algorithms including biologically inspired visual architectures (like HMAX, convolutional neural networks, sparse coding), numerical optimization (non-convex continuous methods for non-linear architectures), as well as human motion sensing (2d human detection and localization, 3d human modeling and 3d reconstruction, etc) from video sequences. Different focus options are available depending on the interests and strengths of the candidate. See, for example, the following tutorial for an overview on some of the topics: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~crismin/PAPERS/tutorial_iccv05.pdf The work is strongly research oriented, targeting to make contributions that can be published at high-profile international conferences . hence this may also involve building a prototype and testing it thoroughly. Willing to work with real image sequences is essential. A strong background in computer vision and machine learning or optimization is desired. Good programming experience with (at least some of) the following environments is essential: C/C++, graphics modeling libraries (OpenInventor, OpenGL), animation packages (Maya, Poser), or scientific programming environments (Matlab). --> APPLICATION PROCESS: Please send a CV (including the name of at least 3 referees who may be asked for recommendation letters) and a brief letter of interests to Cristian Sminchisescu at: crismin at nagoya.uchicago.edu --> STIPEND: The visiting students will be paid the monthly salary: 3200 USD. --> LOCATION: TTI-C is located in Hyde Park (an exciting place to live in the vibrant city of Chicago which offers a wide range of attractions including jazz, classical and modern music and theater, and exciting recreational areas at lake Michigan) on the University of Chicago campus and has a close affiliation with the UofC CS Department. It has excellent computing and working facilities and faculty members with strong interests in AI, computer vision, machine learning, approximation theory and scientific computing (http://www.tti-c.org/faculty.html). =============================================================================== From feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Mon May 22 22:00:08 2006 From: feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Jerome Feldman) Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 19:00:08 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: 2 New Papers Message-ID: <44726CA8.9030200@icsi.berkeley.edu> There are two new ICSI Technical Reports on which we invite comment. The first one, on the binding problem, is quite specialized and will be submitted for publication in some form at some time. There is an accompanying web site with a demo simulation system that you can play with and the code is also available. The second TR is a general discussion of the problem of concept learning from a connectionist perspective. It will (eventually) appear in an edited book on Fodor's Platonist argument for the innateness of concepts. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "A (Somewhat) New Solution to the Binding Problem" L. Barrett, J. Feldman, L. Mac Dermed ICSI Technical Report TR-06-001 May 2006 PDF Overview: To perform automatic, unconscious inference, the human brain must solve the "binding problem" by correctly grouping properties with objects. We propose a structured connectionist model that uses short signatures, rather than temporal synchrony or other means, to achieve this binding. The proposed system models our ability to perform unification and also to handle multiple instantiations of logical terms, among other things. To verify its feasibility, we simulate our prototype with a computer program modeling simple neuron-like elements. The web site with demos, etc is: http://fluents.barrettnexus.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It?s the Body, Stupid: Concept Learning According to Cognitive Science" B. Bergen and J. Feldman, ICSI Technical Report TR-06-002, April 2006 PDF Overview: The classical question "How do people learn new concepts?" is answered by Unified Cognitive Science. Converging evidence from several disciplines suggests that: 1) Our core concepts are based on the neural embodiment of all our sensory, motor, planning, emotional, social, etc. abilities, most of which we share with other primates. 2) We can only be aware of or talk about a limited range of parameters over these abilities and human languages are based on these parameterizations, plus composition. Composition can give rise to additional abilities and parameters. 3) The meanings of all new words and concepts are formed by compositions of previously known concepts. We use a wide range of compositional operations including conjunction, causal links, abstraction, analogy, metaphor, etc. 4) Domain relations, particularly conceptual metaphors, are the central compositional operations that allow us to learn technical and other abstract concepts. 5) We understand language by mapping it to our accumulated experience and imagining (simulating) the consequences. From cns at cnsorg.org Tue May 23 22:33:21 2006 From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS) Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 19:33:21 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: CNS Special accomodation rates and registration Message-ID: <20060524022942.M38861@cnsorg.org> The annual Computational Neuroscience meeting will be held in Edinburgh, UK from July 16th- 20th, 2006. Please note that in order to receive special accomodation rates for the meeting you MUST make your reservations before May 31st, 2006. Please visit www.cnsorg.org to make reservations. Early registration rates are available before June 15th, 2006. Please www.cnsorg.org to register for the meeting. -- CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences From stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk Wed May 24 10:02:47 2006 From: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk (Stefan Wermter) Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 15:02:47 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Stipend funding available for MSc Intelligent Systems Message-ID: <44746787.8010701@sunderland.ac.uk> Stipends available for MSc Intelligent Systems for EU students --------------------------------------------------------------- We are pleased to announce that for eligible selected EU students we can offer stipends with free fees (worth more than 3000 pounds) and a bursary of 500 pounds for our MSc Intelligent Systems. Together this stipend is worth about 5000 Euro in fees and bursary. This scheme applies to our October 2006 for selected EU students. The School of Computing and Technology, University of Sunderland is delighted to announce the launch of its MSc Intelligent Systems programme for 2006. Building on the School's leading edge research in intelligent systems this masters programme will be funded partially via the ESF programme and Women into Science programme. Intelligent Systems is an exciting field of study for science and industry since the currently existing computing systems have often not yet reached the various aspects of human performance. "Intelligent Systems" is a term to describe software systems and methods, which simulate aspects of intelligent behaviour. The intention is to learn from nature and human performance in order to build more powerful computing systems. The aim is to learn from cognitive science, neuroscience, biology, engineering, and linguistics for building more powerful computational system architectures. In this programme a wide variety of novel and exciting techniques will be taught including neural networks, intelligent robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, vision, evolutionary genetic computing, data mining, fuzzy methods, and hybrid intelligent architectures. The Bursary Scheme applies to this Masters programme commencing October 2006 and we have obtained funding through both the European Social Fund (ESF) and under the women into science programme for UK and EU students. For further information in the first instance please see: http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/Teaching_frame.html http://osiris.sund.ac.uk/webedit/allweb/courses/progmode.php?prog=G550A&mode=FT&mode2=&dmode=C Application forms: http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/teaching/sund_is_app.pdf http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/sund_is_app.doc For information and applications contact: alfredo.moscardini at sunderland.ac.uk ***Please forward to students who may be interested.*** Stefan *************************************** Stefan Wermter Professor for Intelligent Systems Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems School of Computing and Technology University of Sunderland St Peters Way Sunderland SR6 0DD United Kingdom email: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0stw/ http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ **************************************** From feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Tue May 30 12:32:08 2006 From: feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Jerome Feldman) Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 09:32:08 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: New Book: From Molecule to Metaphor Message-ID: <447C7388.5050509@icsi.berkeley.edu> My new book is now available: "From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language" The goal of the book is to establish the foundation for a Unified Cognitve Science with neural (connectionist) computation as its scientific language. Some description of the book is available from MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10907 The Amazon page, which has less to say, is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262062534/qid=1148829938/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9325650-0614566?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 As always, feedback is invited. Jerry From ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch Wed May 31 09:06:18 2006 From: ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch (Ludovic Righetti) Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 15:06:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on adaptive frequency oscillators Message-ID: <447D94CA.8010904@a3.epfl.ch> Dear Connectionist, Researchers in dynamical systems and especially in nonlinear oscillators might be interested in the following paper published in Physica D about adaptive frequency oscillators, i.e. nonlinear oscillators that can adapt to the frequency of any periodic signal. L. Righetti, J. Buchli, and A.J. Ijspeert. Dynamic Hebbian learning in adaptive frequency oscillators. Physica D, 216(2):269-281, 2006. http://birg2.epfl.ch/publications/fulltext/righetti06b.pdf Abstract: Nonlinear oscillators are widely used in biology, physics and engineering for modeling and control. They are interesting because of their synchronization properties when coupled to other dynamical systems. In this paper, we propose a learning rule for oscillators which adapts their frequency to the frequency of any periodic or pseudo-periodic input signal. Learning is done in a dynamic way: it is part of the dynamical system and not an offline process. An interesting property of our model is that it is easily generalizable to a large class of oscillators, from phase oscillators to relaxation oscillators and strange attractors with a generic learning rule. One major feature of our learning rule is that the oscillators constructed can adapt their frequency without any signal processing or the need to specify a time window or similar free parameters. All the processing is embedded in the dynamics of the adaptive oscillator. The convergence of the learning is proved for the Hopf oscillator, then numerical experiments are carried out to explore the learning capabilities of the system. Finally, we generalize the learning rule to non-harmonic oscillators like relaxation oscillators and strange attractors. More papers can be found on http://birg.epfl.ch Best regards, Ludovic Righetti -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Ludovic Righetti Research Assistant Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG) Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne EPFL - Station 14 - CH1015 Lausanne Tel: +41 21 693 6620 Fax: +41 21 693 3705 URL: http://birg.epfl.ch Email: ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch ------------------------------------------------------------- From g.goodhill at imb.uq.edu.au Wed May 31 20:01:42 2006 From: g.goodhill at imb.uq.edu.au (Geoffrey Goodhill) Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:01:42 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Courses in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <447E2E66.8020503@imb.uq.edu.au> Dear Connectionists, I am keen to raise awareness of the content of undergraduate or graduate university courses in computational neuroscience that are taught worldwide. If you are involved in teaching such a course I would be very grateful to hear the following from you: - Year level / how many lectures / how many students - Any prequisites - Topics covered - Textbooks used - Type of assessment and any other issues that you think relevant (e.g. problems you often encounter). Obviously if you have a webpage or course document which has all this information already please just send me that. I will of course post a summary of responses, so please let me know if any part of your reply should be treated as confidential. Many thanks, Geoff Geoffrey J Goodhill, PhD Associate Professor Queensland Brain Institute, School of Physical Sciences & Institute for Molecular Bioscience University of Queensland St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Phone: +61 7 3346 2612 Fax: +61 7 3346 8836 Email: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au http://cns.qbi.uq.edu.au Editor-in-Chief, Network: Computation in Neural Systems http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0954898X.asp From ps629 at columbia.edu Mon May 29 21:43:00 2006 From: ps629 at columbia.edu (Paul Sajda) Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 21:43:00 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in neuroimaging and neural signal processing Message-ID: Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Neuroimaging and Neural Signal Processing Columbia University, Department of Biomedical Engineering We are currently seeking a postdoctoral fellow for appointment starting in September 2006. The fellowship will be for a two year period and focus on development of acquisition, signal processing, and machine learning algorithms for single-trial neuroimaging. The ideal candidate would have a background in signal processing and machine learning, preferably with prior experience in acquisition and processing of either EEG or fMRI data (preferably both). Programming familiarity in MATLAB is required, with knowledge of C++, C and signal acquisition and processing hardware a plus. Our group is very dynamic and includes laboratory space both on the engineering and medical school campuses. We have several high density EEG systems, 1.5 and 3T MRI scanners and a system for simultaneous acquisition of EEG/fMRI. Interested candidates should send a CV and list of 3 references to Prof. Paul Sajda (ps629 at columbia.edu). Paul Sajda, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University 351 Engineering Terrace Building, Mail Code 8904 1210 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027 tel: (212) 854-5279 fax: (212) 854-8725 email: ps629 at columbia.edu http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu From terry at salk.edu Tue May 30 13:06:28 2006 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 10:06:28 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION July, 2006 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 18, Number 7 - July 1, 2006 Note Optimal Neuronal Tuning for Finite Stimulus Spaces W. Michael Brown and Alex Baecker Letters A Fast Learning Algorithm for Deep Belief Nets Geoffrey E. Hinton, Simon Osindero and Yee-Whye Teh Optimal Tuning Widths in Population Coding of Periodic Variables Marcelo A. Montemurro and Stefano Panzeri How Inhibitory Oscillations Can Train Networks and Punish Competitors Kenneth A. Norman, Ehren Newman, Greg Detre, and Sean Polyn Temporal Decoding by Phase Locked Loops-Unique Features of Circuit Level Implementations and their Significance for Vibrissal Information Processing Miriam Zacksenhouse and Ehud Ahissar Representation and Timing inTheories of the Dopamine System Nathaniel Daw, Aaron Courville, and David Touretzky Experiments with AdaBoost.RT, an Improved Boosting Scheme for Regression D.P. Solomatine and D.L. Shrestha A Connectionist Computational Model for Epistemic and Temporal Reasoning Artur S. d'Avila Garcez and Luis Lamb ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2006 - VOLUME 18 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $114 $54 $57.78 Individual $100 $107.00 $154 $90 $96.30 Institution $730 $781.10 $784 $657 $702.99 * 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 terry at salk.edu Mon May 1 13:34:04 2006 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 10:34:04 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION June, 2006 In-Reply-To: <200309271643.h8RGhIA58569@purkinje.salk.edu> Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 18, Number 6 - June 1, 2006 Letters How Inhibitory Oscillations Can Train Neural Networks and Punish Competitors Kenneth A. Norman, Ehren Newman, Greg Detre, and Sean Polyn Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data Sepp Hochreiter and Klaus Obermayer Analysis of Cluttered Scenes Using an Elastic Matching Approach for Stereo Images Christian Eckes, Jochen Triesch, and Christoph von der Malsburg Optimal Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity for Precise Action Potential Firing in Supervised Learning Jean-Pascal Pfister, Taro Toyoizumi, David Barber, and Wufram Gerstner Stongly Improved Stability and Faster Convergence of Temporal Sequence Learning by Utilising Input Correlations Only Stereo Images Bernd Porr and Florentin Woergoetter Variational Bayesian Multinomial Probit Regression with Gaussian Process Priors Mark Girolami and Simon Rogers ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2006 - VOLUME 18 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $114 $54 $57.78 Individual $100 $107.00 $154 $90 $96.30 Institution $730 $781.10 $784 $657 $702.99 * includes 7% GST MIT Press Journals, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ----- From david.barber at idiap.ch Tue May 2 08:35:22 2006 From: david.barber at idiap.ch (David Barber) Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 14:35:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation and Presentations : IDIAP 15th Anniversary Workshop Message-ID: <00e501c66de4$e1249540$b7dd21c0@davidbarber> ************************************************************************************** Call for Participation and Presentations: IDIAP 15th Anniversary Workshop 12-13 September, 2006 http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland Abstract Submission Deadline : July 11, 2006 ************************************************************************************** Workshop Description : IDIAP is leading Swiss research institute dedicated to the study of human-machine interaction, with strong activity in speech processing, machine learning, multimodal interaction, brain computer interfaces, computer vision and information retrieval. As part of IDIAP's 15th Anniversary, the workshop will provide an informal setting within which to discuss and interact, taking place in the beautiful setting of Martigny in the Swiss Alps. The two day workshop will cover four key areas: * Machine Learning * Speech Processing * Computer Vision * Information Retrieval The last 15 years has brought a maturation in these fields, leading to many theoretical and practical advances. The statistical paradigm has been prevalent in recent years, leading to a common framework within which many of the techniques applied in these different areas may be related. Whilst, therefore, a stronger understanding of the commonality of techniques now exists, each field requires specific insights for the continued and successful development toward solving substantial real-world applications. The workshop will address these areas from the viewpoint of key progress made, current techniques and applications, and will discuss future prospects in these ever growing and exciting fields. The scope of the workshop is broad, with the desire to encourage interaction between researchers from these diverse areas. Of particular interest are key technical developments, and the highlighting of current difficulties preventing their further application to substantial real-world problems. ************************************************************************************** Invited speakers (provisional) : Chris Bishop (Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK) Nelson Morgan (International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, USA) Thomas Hofmann (Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany) Patrick Perez (Irisa/Inria-Rennes, France.) ************************************************************************************** Call for Presentations : We invite talks from students and researchers in any of the above fields, addressing either a theoretical or application issue. Talks which discuss technical developments are welcome, particularly those which address key stumbling blocks in the application of theory to substantial real-world problems. The talks are to be 15 minutes + 5 minutes questions. Please see http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ for submission of abstracts of presentations. * Deadline for abstract submission is 11:59pm (GMT) Tuesday July 11, 2006. * Decisions will be emailed on or before July 20. ************************************************************************************** Registration for the workshop is free, but limited to 150 participants. ************************************************************************************** Travel Grants : A small number of travel grants (limited to CHF 500 each) are available. Please see http://www.idiap.ch/ws15/ for details of how to apply. ************************************************************************************** Organizers: David Barber (IDIAP) Herve Bourlard (IDIAP) From kamps at in.tum.de Thu May 4 04:23:06 2006 From: kamps at in.tum.de (Marc de Kamps) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 10:23:06 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 4th Neuroengineering School Message-ID: <000c01c66f53$f8bafad0$383c9f83@atknoll3> *********************************************************************** 4th European School of Neuro-IT and Neuroengineering Dynamics, Computation and Learning in Neural Systems GENOVA (ITALY), 13-17 JUNE 2006 *********************************************************************** ORGANIZED BY: University of Genova -Dept of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering (DIBE), -Dept of Informatics, Sistems and Telematics (DIST), -Doctorate School on Science and Technology for the Information Society, PhD program on Bioengineering Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and University of Genova -Doctorate School on Humanoid Technologies, Phd program on Humanoid Technologies Neuro-IT EU Network of Excellence (nEUro-IT.net) NEUROversIT EU Marie Curie program WEBSITE: www.neuroengineering.it The school, named after Massimo Grattarola who initiated the series in 2000, will take place from June 13 to June 17, 2006 at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Genova, in the beautiful historical building of Villa Giustiniani-Cambiaso. The school is intended for junior and senior researchers and other professionals (doctors, engineers, biologists and psychologists etc.) working in these areas, as well as for students attending faculties of engineering, medicine, biology or psychology. A total of 50 PhD students or postdocs will be admitted. Admissions will be on first-come first-serve basis. This year, the school will address key topics in the Neuroengineering field, with a focus on ?Dynamics, Computation and Learning in Neural Systems? and their technical realization in artificial systems. All issues should be dealt with, in an interdisciplinary way, both from the biological and the IT/engineering perspective. The topics covered will include: 1) Neural-network dynamics -Neurobiology of in-vivo and in-vitro neuronal systems -Non linear dynamics and neuronal signal analysis -Theoretical and experimental models 2) Neural plasticity, learning and development -Neurobiology of learning and memory -Closed-loop system and learning -Learning and plasticity in in-vitro neuronal system 3) Coding and decoding neuronal signals -Rate/Time coding -Information transmission -Sensori-motor processing 4) Advanced neuro-prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces -Technological advances in BMI -Decoding of neuronal signals 5) Neuro-robotics and biologically inspired robots -Bi-directional neuro-robotic interfaces -Cognitive neuroscience -Biorobots CONFIRMED SPEAKERS John Beggs (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA) Fabio Benfenati (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Luca Berdondini (University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland) Egidio D?Angelo (University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy) Oscar de Feo (University College Cork, Cork, Ireland) Andreas Engel (Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany) Eduardo Fernandez (University M. Hernandez, Alicante, Spain) Michele Giugliano (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) Humeau Yann (CNRS, Strasbourg, FR) Rolf K?tter (University of Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany) Milena Koudelka-Hep (University of Neuchatel, Neuchatel, Switzerland) Sergio Martinoia (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Giorgio Metta (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Jaap van Pelt (Brain Institute, Amsterdam, NL) Tim Pearce (University of Leicester, Leicester, UK) Sajit Rao (MIT, Boston, USA) Giulio Sandini (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Vittorio Sanguineti (University of Genova, Genova, Italy) Sara Solla (Northwestern University ,Chicago, USA) Vincent Torre (SISSA, Trieste, Italy) Paul Verschure (Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH-UZ, Zurich, Switzerland) REGISTRATION FEES (*) PhD students: 200 euros (250 euros after May 15th) Postdocs: 250 euros (300 euros after May 15th) Business and medical professionals: 350 euros (400 euros after May 15th) (*) includes program, reception, two coffee breaks and lunch each day, lab activities and lecture notes SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION: Andreas Engel (Hamburg, Germany) Marc de Kamps (M?nchen, Germany) Alois Knoll (M?nchen, Germany) Sergio Martinoia (Genova, Italy) Giulio Sandini (Genova, Italy) Vittorio Sanguineti (Genova, Italy) _____________________________________ Sergio Martinoia, PhD Associate Professor of Bioelectronics Neuroengineering and BionanoTechnologies - NBT - Group Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering - DIBE Via Opera Pia 11A, 16145, GENOVA, ITALY Tel. +39-10-3532251 Fax. +39-10-3532133 URL: http://www.bio.dibe.unige.it/ email: martinoia at dibe.unge.it From rammurthy at iiit.ac.in Wed May 3 05:39:52 2006 From: rammurthy at iiit.ac.in (Rammurthy) Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 15:09:52 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Special Issue of International Journal of Neural Systems Message-ID: <00b101c66e95$8bc5db20$1724a8c0@iiiteec432ffc0> Dear Sir/Madam, Here is an announcement of the special issue of International Journal of Neural Systems, World Scientific. Please submit your papers to the special issue. With Regards, Rama Murthy CALL FOR PAPERS - SPECIAL ISSUE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEURAL SYSTEMS ON Complex Valued Neural Networks and Neuro-computing: Novel Methods, Applications, and Implementations Editor-in-Chief: Hojjat Adeli, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. (Email: Adeli.1 at osu.edu) Guest Editors for this special issue: Vadrevu Sree Hari Rao, Department of Mathematics, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad -500072, INDIA E-mail: vshrao at yahoo.com Garimella Rama Murthy, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad - 500019, India, E-mail: rammurthy at iiit.net Tohru Nitta, Mathematical Neuroinformatics Group, Neuroscience Research Institute,National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan. E-mail: tohru-nitta at aist.go.jp Igor Aizenberg, Texas A&M University-Texarkana,Department of Computer and Information SciencesTexas 75505 USA, E-mail: igor.aizenberg at tamut.edu A complex valued neural network is a neural network (of arbitrary topology) which consists of complex valued input and/or weights and/or thresholds and/or activation functions. The need for such neural networks is very real. For instance, in electrical engineering, signals are complex valued. The processing of such signals requires the design and implementation of new complex valued neural network architectures. This subject has been gaining increasing interest and significance in recent years. Indeed, several interesting applications of the complex valued neural network architectures have been discussed in the following areas: ? Optoelectronic Imaging, ? Optical Computing, ? Remote Sensing, ? Quantum Neural Devices and Systems ? Spatiotemporal Analysis of Physiological Neural Systems, ? Artificial Neural Information Processing ? Communication System Design (Mobile Channel Equalizer Design), ? Direction of Arrival Estimation (Signal Processing) ? Traffic Control ? Robotics ? Neuron Dynamics ? Chaos in Complex Domain The wide applicability of these new class of networks potentially yield new theories required for novel and more effective functions and mechanisms. In this special issue of International Journal of Neural Systems the goal is to publish original contributions in this exciting and rapidly developing field of complex valued neural networks. Topics for the special issue include theory and applications of complex valued neural networks. All papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three referees. Submission of a manuscript implies that it is the authors' original unpublished work and is not being submitted for possible publication elsewhere. Please inform the guest editors and the Editor-in-Chief about your intention to submit a manuscript for possible publication in the special issue by May 10, 2006 and send the PDF file of your manuscript by October 31, 2006 to one of the Guest Editors with a copy to the Editor-in-Chief. From nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr Wed May 3 06:03:32 2006 From: nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee) Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 19:03:32 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Extended Deadline for ISABEL2006 (Inter. Symp. on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning) In-Reply-To: <43F9E56D.7080405@science.ru.nl> Message-ID: <200605031105.k43B5TAQ001231@neuron.kaist.ac.kr> Extended Deadline for 1-Page Summary : May 20, 2006 ISABEL 2006 International Symposium on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning - Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware for Brain-like Intelligent Functions - August 24-25, 2006 Seoul, Korea www.isabel2006.org isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr Organized by Brain Science Research Center, KAIST Cognitive Science Research Center, Yonsei University International Neural Network Society SIG-Korea 1. Topic and Goals Topics include, but are not limited to, -Models of auditory pathway -Models of visual pathway -Models of cognition, learning, and inference -Models of attention, emotion, and consciousness -Models of autonomous behavior -Hardware implementation of bio-inspired models -Engineering applications of bio-inspired models This symposium aims to bring together international researchers from the cognitive neuroscience and engineering communities for biologically-inspired models and system implementations with human-like intelligent functions. The previous meeting was held as a post-IJCNN Symposium on Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware (BIMH2005) at Montreal, Canada, on August 5, 2005. Although artificial neural networks are based on information processing mechanisms in our brain, there still exists a big gap between the biological neural networks and artificial neural networks. The more intelligence we would like to incorporate into artificial intelligent systems, the more biologically-inspired models and hardware are required. Fortunately the cognitive neuroscience has been developed enormously during the last decade, and engineers now have more to learn from the science. In this symposium we will discuss what engineers want to learn from the science and how the scientists may be able to provide the knowledge. Then, mathematical models will be presented with more biological plausibility. The hardware and system implementation will also be reported with the performance comparison with conventional methods for real-world complex applications. A panel will be organized for the future research directions at the end. This symposium will promote synergetic interaction among cognitive neuroscientists, neural networks and robotics engineers, and result in more biologically-plausible mathematical models and hardware systems with more human-like intelligent performance in real-world applications. 2. Organizers International Advisory Board Hyung Suck Cho, KAIST Chan-Sup Chung, Yonsei University Rodney Douglas, ETH Zurich Kunihiko Fukushima, Tokyo Univ. of Technology Mun Sang Kim, KIST Ho-Gil Lee, KITECH Sukhan Lee, Sungkyunkwan University Sang-Rok Oh, IITA Harold Szu, George Washington University Takeshi Yamakawa, Kyushu Inst. of Technology Hyun-Seung Yang, KAIST Donald C. Wunsch, University of Missouri Rolla Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University Symposium Co-Chairs Soo-Young Lee, Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST Yillbyung Lee, Director, Cognitive Science Research Center, Yonsei University Program Committee Chair: Rhee-Man Kil, KAIST Vice Chair: Minho Lee, Kyungpook National University Members: Allan Kardec Barros, Universidade Federal do Maranhao, Brazil Vladimir Cherkassky, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, USA Sung-Bae Cho, Yonsei University, Korea Young-Jo Cho, ETRI Yoonsuck Choe, Texas A&M University, USA Jin Young Choi,, Seoul National University, Korea Key-Sun.Choi, KAIST, Korea Seungjin Choi, Postech, Korea Andrzej Cichocki, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Wlodek Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna, Texas A&M University, USA Zhenya He, Southeast University, China Khan M. Iftekharuddin, University of Memphis, USA Giacomo Indiveri, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Cheongtag Kim, Seoul National University, Korea Dae-Shik Kim, Boston University, USA Ho Joon Kim, Handong University, Korea Sung-il Kim, Korea University, Korea Robert Kozma, University of Memphis, USA Dong-Soo Kwon, KAIST, Korea Daniel Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA Minho Lee, Kyungpook National University, Korea Sanghoon Lee, Seoul National University, Korea Seong-Whan Lee, Korea University, Korea Te-Won Lee, University of California - San Diego, USA Kichun Nam, Korea University, Korea Se-Young Oh, Postech, Korea Yong-Woon Park, ADD Giulio Sandini, University of Genoa, Italy Sebastian Seung, MIT, USA Jang-Kyoo Shin, Kyungpook National University, Korea Kwee-Bo Sim, Chungang University, Korea Harold Szu, George Washington University, USA Jun Tani , RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Jun Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Donald C. Wunsch, University of Missouri Rolla, USA Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University, China Mingsheng Zhao, Tsinghua University, China 3. Invited Speakers Kunihiko Fukushima, Tokyo University of Technology, Japan Visual Motion Analysis by a Neural Network Daniel D. Lee, University of Pennsylvania, USA Invariant manifold recognition of facial expression Te-Won Lee, University of California - San Diego, USA Independent Vector Analysis Allan Kardec Barros, Universidade Federal do Maranhao, Brazil Redundancy reduction: a strategy employed by the brain for information processing? Sebastian Seung, MIT, USA Representing part-whole relationships in recurrent neural networks Jun Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Neurodynamic Optimization: Beyond of Convexity Bo Zhang, Tsinghua University, China Hierarchical Machine Learning - A learning methodology inspired by human's intelligence Mingsheng Zhao, Tsinghua University, China The TAF Neuron Model and Learning Algorithms for the TAF Neural Networks Wlodek Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland Neurocognitive Approach to Computational Creativity Robert Kozma, University of Memphis, USA Dynamical Systems Approach to Intentional Robots Seiji Aoyagi, Department of Systems Management Engineering, Kansai University, Japan Recognition of Contact State by using Neural Network for Micromachined Array Type Tactile Sensor Giacomo Indiveri, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Multi-chip reconfigurable networks of VLSI spiking neurons with spike-based learning synapses Giulio Sandini, University of Genoa, Italy Humanoid babies Jun Tani, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Neuro-Cognitive Robotics: Experiments, Analysis and Interpretations Dae-Shik Kim, Boston University, USA Multiparametric Imaging of Brain Structure and Function Seung-Schik Yoo, Harvard Medical School, USA Brain-Computer-Interface using functional MRI: Thought-controlled Keyboard and Mouse 4. Intended Audience The symposium is aimed to be a high communicative forum for researchers from the cognitive neuroscience, artificial neural networks, and robotics communities. The presentation papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience, neural networks, and robotics communities. The members of the International Advisory Board and Program Committee had already agreed to submit their papers for the presentation. However, the submitted papers will be fully refereed by the Program Committee and accepted based on the quality of the papers. 5. Format The symposium will go on two full days with oral session with invited and contributed presentations, and one panel discussion session. To encourage exchange of ideas at least 20 minutes will be allocated for each talk with additional 10 minutes. The balance between the science and engineering will be made for the speakers and panelists. 6. Publicity The contributed papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience, neural networks, and robotics communities though public list servers. Also, a dedicated homepage (www.isabel2006.org, cnsl.kaist.ac.kr/isabel2006.htm) will be maintained, and several top researchers will be cordially invited through personal e-mails. The prospective authors are invited to submit one page summary by e-mail to isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr. Also, after acceptance, the presentation materials will be collected and made available to the attendees as a booklet. The extended version of the presented papers will be published as a special issue of the new online/offline journal, Neural Information Processing - Letters and Reviews (www.nip-lr.info), of which the Editor-in-Chief is the Symposium Chair.. 7. Important Dates May 20, 2006 Extended Deadline for Summary (1 page) June 20, 2006 Acceptance Notification July 20, 2006 Camera-ready notes due We wish to thank the followings for their contribution to the success of this conference: Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development International Neural Network Society From mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk Thu May 4 04:06:52 2006 From: mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk (Mark Plumbley) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 09:06:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP reminder: ICA Research Network International Workshop, Liverpool, UK, 18-19 Sept 2006 Message-ID: <9D47A2D30B0BFB4C920786C25EC6934574E8AC@staff-mail.vpn.elec.qmul.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists, For those of you working in ICA or source separation, a reminder that the abstract submission deadline for the ICA Research Network International Workshop is this Friday (5 May 2006). Best wishes, Mark Plumbley ----------------- *** CALL FOR PAPERS *** 2006 ICA Research Network International Workshop www.icarn.org Liverpool, UK 18 - 19 September 2006 +++ Abstract Submission Deadline: Fri 5 May 2006 +++ The ICA Research Network is sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the U.K., and is aimed at improving communications in the area of Blind Source Separation (BSS) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). The 2006 ICA Research Network International Workshop will be held at the University of Liverpool covering the latest developments and techniques in the area of BSS/ICA. Submissions from international participants are most welcome. Topics The workshop will feature keynote addresses and technical presentations (oral and poster), which will be included in the registration. Papers are solicited for, but not limited to, the following areas: * Algorithms and Architectures for BSS/ICA - Nonlinear ICA - Probabilistic Models - Sparse Coding - etc * Theory of BSS/ICA - Optimization - Complex Methods - Time-Frequency Representations - etc * Applications of BSS/ICA - Audio - Bio-Informatics - Biomedical Engineering - Communications - Finance - Image Processing - Psychology - Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA) - etc Extended Abstract Submission Procedure Prospective authors are invited to submit extended abstracts of no more than two A4-size pages, including: * Title * Authors' details * the work with contexts and * preliminary results (a Table or a Figure) Submission Please submit your extended abstract by e-mail (with a PDF attachment) with the subject "Extended Abstract Submission" to icarnw06 at liverpool.ac.uk. Full Paper Submission Procedure Authors of accepted extended abstracts will be invited to submit a paper of up to four pages in the PDF format. At least one author of each accepted paper must undertake to attend the workshop. Accepted papers will be published in a bound volume. Authors of the most innovative papers will be invited to submit substantially extended and updated versions of their papers for further review and possible publication in the International Journal of Neural Systems. Registration Costs (UK ?) Full Registration by 7 August 2006: ?165 After 7 August 2006: ?200 Student Registration by 7 August 2006: ?140 After 7 August 2006: ?165 Important Dates/Deadlines Submission of extended abstract 5 May 2006 Notification of acceptance 2 June 2006 Submission of camera-ready accepted paper 7 August 2006 Early registration and author registration 7 August 2006 Final date for registration 4 September 2006 Workshop 18-19 September 2006 Contact For more information visit www.icarn.org or email icarnw06 at liverpool.ac.uk ************************************************************** Professor A K Nandi David Jardine Chair of Signal Processing Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics The University of Liverpool Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, L69 3GJ, UK Tel: +44 151 794 4525 Fax: +44 151 794 4540 http://www.liv.ac.uk/eee/academicstaff/nandi.htm ************************************************************* --- Dr Mark D Plumbley Centre for Digital Music Department of Electronic Engineering Queen Mary University of London Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 7518 Fax: +44 (0)20 7882 7997 Email: mark.plumbley at elec.qmul.ac.uk http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/people/markp/ From Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr Thu May 4 06:17:12 2006 From: Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr (Elizabeth Thomas) Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 12:17:12 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: postdoc in Dijon France Message-ID: <4459D4A8.1060105@u-bourgogne.fr> We are seeking to recruit a postdoctoral fellow for projects concerning the use of artificial neural networks in gait analysis. The use of the network would permit an automatic classification of locomotive deficits as well as an understanding of the underlying physiological problem. The data to be studied will come from human patients suffering from arthritis as well as rat stroke models. A good candidate should be able to program (preferably in Matlab or C++) as well as be comfortable interacting with the medical and scientific community. The work will take place in an INSERM laboratory at the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France, specializing in locomotion. An emphasis will be placed on the publication of the results of this project and the methods developed during the course of it. The position will be funded for a year beginning in either September or December 2006, with the possibility of a second year. Dijon is a gastronomic centre in France, in the heart of the Burgundy wine area and one and a half hours away by train from Paris. Interested candidates, please send a CV to my e-mail address Elizabeth Thomas INSERM/ERM 207 Motricit?-Plasticit? : Performance, Dysfonctionnement, Vieillissement et Technologies d'optimisation. Campus Universitaire Fac. des Sciences du Sport BP 27877 F-21078 Dijon France Tel : 0033380396784 Fax : 0033380396702 Courriel : Elizabeth.Thomas at u-bourgogne.fr visitez notre site web : www.u-bourgogne.fr/erm207 From giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it Thu May 4 10:01:26 2006 From: giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it (Giovanni Pezzulo) Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 16:01:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: ABiALS Workshop 2006 Message-ID: (We apologize if you receive more than one copy of this message) ########################################################################### 2nd C A L L F O R P A P E R S ABiALS Workshop 2006 Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems ########################################################################### SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 ROME, ITALY http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ABiALS Contributions to ABiALS 2006 will be published in a re-reviewed, extended post-workshop proceedings volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series of Springer Verlag. ABiALS 2006 will be held during the ninth international conference on the SIMULATION of ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR (SAB 2006) http://www.sab06.org ABiALS is an interdisciplinary workshop investigating the influence of anticipations on behavior and learning. ABiALS is designed to help investigate how anticipations can influence, initiate, and guide behavior and learning as well as how anticipatory influences can be implemented in an adaptive learning system. Submission deadline: Wednesday, 15. JUNE 2006 Anticipatory behavior is a mechanism, or a behavior, that does not only depend on the past and present but also on predictions, expectations, or beliefs about the future. ___________________________________________________________________________ OBJECTIVES: After two previous successful gatherings during SAB 2002, resulting in the Springer-Verlag LNCS 2684 State-of-the-Art survey named after the workshop, and SAB2004, ABiALS 2006 will continue to explore anticipatory influences on behavior and learning. The aim of ABiALS 2006 is to join researchers in their understanding and development of anticipatory mechanisms in adaptive behavior. It is aimed for an interdisciplinary gathering that combines the expertise of researchers from various disciplines including neuroscience, cognitive psychology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, control, and vision research to shed further light on the concept of anticipation. Essentially, it will be discussed how knowledge about the future can influence actual behavioral mechanisms, including influences on attention, action decision making and control, as well as (behavioral and model) learning. ___________________________________________________________________________ KEY INTERESTS: Anticipatory mechanisms for model learning * Adaptive, predictive model learning * Adaptive, predictive filtering * Anticipatory attention * Surprise for model learning * Hierarchical, predictive model architectures * Timing in predictive models Model-predictive, adaptive control architectures * Inverse models and goal-oriented control * Hierarchical structures in adaptive, model-predictive control * Surprise in control * Delayed feedback, forward models, and multiply timed control Anticipatory, adaptive systems / agents * Integration of anticipatory adaptive processes in adaptive systems * Anticipatory decision making * Anticipatory behavior in multiagent systems * Interactions of anticipations, motivations, and emotions * Anticipations in BDI architectures * Curiosity and epistemic actions Distinctions of anticipatory mechanisms: * Benefits and drawbacks of different anticipatory mechanisms * Distinction to reactive mechanisms * Emergence of anticipatory mechanisms in evolution * Anticipatory mechanisms in constructivist, interactive frameworks Anticipatory mechanisms in animals and humans * Behavioral and cognitive anticipatory mechanisms in animals and humans * Anticipatory mechanisms in neuroscience * Anticipatory mechanisms in cognitive/experimental psychology ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBMISSION: Submissions for the workshop should address one of the interests listed above. The workshop is not limited to one particular type of anticipatory learning system or a particular representation of anticipations. The workshop will be generally targeted towards short presentations and extended discussions. The advantages and disadvantages of different anticipatory mechanisms and representations will be discussed in detail. Several discussion sessions on the topics in question will put the presentations into a broader perspective. Papers should be submitted electronically to one of the organizers via email in pdf or ps format. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. If you cannot submit your contribution electronically, please contact one of the organizers. Submitted papers should have a maximal length of ten pages in 10pt, one-column format. Please use the LNCS Springer-Verlag style as specified at http://www.springeronline.com/comp/lncs/authors.html (LATEX utilities can be found in the file llncs2e.zip). Papers will be reviewed for acceptance by the program committee and the organizers. Submission deadline is the 15th of JUNE 2006. Contributions to ABiALS 2006 will be published in an extended post-workshop proceedings volume in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence series (LNAI) (as was done for ABiALS 2002). For this, all papers will undergo a second review process. The proceedings will be further endowed with invited contributions by key researchers in the area. For further up-to-date information please refer to http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ABiALS/ ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ IMPORTANT DATES: 15. June 2006: Deadline for Submissions 30. September 2006: ABiALS Workshop 2006 ___________________________________________________________________________ PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Christian Balkenius Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden Edoardo Datteri Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Italy Pier Luca Lanzi Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Ralf Moeller Computer Engineering Group, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University, Germany Tony Prescott Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield, UK Jesse Reichler Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Alexander Riegler CLEA, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium Deb Roy Cognitive Machines Group, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA Samarth Swarup Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL Stewart W. Wilson Prediction Dynamics, Concord, MA ___________________________________________________________________________ ORGANIZERS: Martin V. Butz, Department of Cognitive Psychology University of Wuerzburg, Germany Butz[a at t]psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/~butz Olivier Sigaud AnimatLab, University Paris VI, Paris, France olivier.sigaud[a at t]lip6.fr http://animatlab.lip6.fr/Sigaud Gianluca Baldassarre Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISTC-CNR) Roma, Italy gianluca.baldassarre[a at t]istc.cnr.it http://gral.istc.cnr.it/baldassarre/ Giovanni Pezzulo Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISTC-CNR) Roma, Italy giovanni.pezzulo[a at t]istc.cnr.it http://www.istc.cnr.it/createhtml.php?nbr=1 From david.barber at idiap.ch Fri May 5 06:02:51 2006 From: david.barber at idiap.ch (David Barber) Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 12:02:51 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Positions in Biologically Inspired Information Processing Message-ID: <08bd01c6702b$12277c00$4f21b280@davidbarber> Postdoc and PhD positions in biologically inspired information processing *************************************************************************************** The IDIAP Research Institute (www.idiap.ch) seeks immediately qualified candidates for PhD and Post-Doctoral positions in the field of bio-inspired information processing. The starting date is immediate, with competitive salaries. Current information extraction techniques perform well when event types are well represented in the training data but fail when encountering information-rich unexpected rare events. On the other hand, biological organisms rely for their survival on detecting and identifying new events. A new 5-year multi-site DIRAC project coordinated by IDIAP and funded by the European Community (8 partners in 5 countries), aims to move the art of machine information extraction from the classical signal processing/pattern classification paradigm to more human-like information extraction. IDIAP's current research emphasis in the project is mainly on human speech communication but the extension to other types of cognitive signals is likely. Please see www.diracproject.org for further details. The successful candidate will combine her/his excellent background in electrical engineering, physics or mathematics and have interests in biological information processing and machine learning. The successful candidate will work closely with Prof. Hynek Hermansky, an expert in acoustic processing, and Dr. Barber, an expert in machine learning and probabilistic models. Interested candidates should send a letter of motivation, along with their detailed CV and names of 3 references to jobs at idiap.ch. More information can also be obtained by contacting either Prof. Hynek Hermansky hynek.hermansky at idiap.ch or Dr. David Barber david.barber at idiap.ch Please read http://www.idiap.ch/pages/press/A_guide_to_IDIAP_Job_Applications_new.pdf for guidlines on the application procedure. --------------------------- IDIAP is an equal opportunity employer and is actively involved in the European initiative involving the Advancement of Women in Science. IDIAP seeks to maintain a principle of open competition (on the basis of merit) to appoint the best candidate, provides equal opportunity for all candidates, and equally encourages both genders to consider employment with IDIAP. IDIAP is located in the town of Martigny in Valais, a scenic region in the south of Switzerland, surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe, and offering exciting recreational activities, including hiking, climbing and skiing, as well as varied cultural activities. It is within close proximity to Geneva Lake and Lausanne. Although IDIAP is located in the French part of Switzerland, English is the main working language. Free English and French lessons are provided. From nq6 at columbia.edu Fri May 5 15:07:44 2006 From: nq6 at columbia.edu (Ning Qian) Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 15:07:44 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: preprints on movement duration and orientation models Message-ID: <445BA280.3060509@columbia.edu> Dear Colleagues, The pdf files for the following two preprints are available for download (see web address after each abstract below). Best regards, Ning Qian An Optimization Principle for Determining Movement Duration Hirokazu Tanaka, John Krakauer, and Ning Qian, /J. Neurophysiol./, 2006, in press. Abstract Movement duration is an integral component of motor control, but nearly all extant optimization models of motor planning pre-fix duration instead of explaining it. Here we propose a new optimization principle that predicts movement duration. The model assumes that the brain attempts to minimize movement duration under the constraint of meeting an accuracy criterion. The criterion is task and context dependent but is fixed for a given task and context. The model determines a unique duration as a tradeoff between speed (time optimality) and accuracy (acceptable end-point scatter). We analyzed the model for a linear motor plant, and obtained a closed-form equation for determining movement duration. By solving the equation numerically with specific plant-parameters for the eye and arm, we found that the model can reproduce saccade duration as a function of amplitude (the main sequence), and arm-movement duration as a function of the target-distance-to-size ratio (Fitts' law). In addition, it explains the dependence of peak saccadic speed on amplitude, and the dependence of saccadic duration on initial eye position. Furthermore, for arm movements, the model predicts a scaling relationship between peak velocity and distance, and a reduction in movement duration with a moderate increase in viscosity. Finally, for a linear plant, our model predicts a neural control signal identical to that of the minimum-variance model set to the same movement duration. This control signal is a smooth function of time (except at the end point), in contrast to the discontinuous bang-bang control found in the time-optimal-control literature. We suggest that one aspect of movement planning, as revealed by movement duration, may be to assign an end-point accuracy criterion for a given task and context. http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu/publications/min-time.pdf A Comparison among some Models of V1 Orientation Selectivity Andrew F. Teich and Ning Qian, /J. Neurophysiol./, 2006, in press. Abstract Several models exist for explaining V1 orientation tuning. The modified feedforward model (MFM) and the recurrent model (RM) are major examples. We have implemented, at the same level of detail, these two models alongside a few newer variations, and thoroughly compared their receptive-field structures. We found that anti-phase inhibition in the MFM enhances both spatial phase information and orientation tuning, producing well-tuned simple cells. This remains true for a newer version of the MFM that incorporates un-tuned complex-cell inhibition. In contrast, when the recurrent connections in the RM are strong enough to produce typical V1 orientation tuning, they also eliminate spatial phase information, making the cells complex. Introducing phase-specificity into the connections of the RM (as done in an original version of the RM) can make the cells phase sensitive, but the cells show an incorrect 90 deg peak-shift of orientation tuning under opposite contrast signs. An inhibition-dominant version of the RM can generate well-tuned cells across the simple/complex spectrum, but it predicts that the net effect of cortical interactions is to suppress feedforward excitation across all orientations in simple cells. Finally, adding anti-phase inhibition used in the MFM into the RM produces a most general model. We call this new model the modified recurrent model (MRM) and show that this model can also produce well-tuned cells throughout the simple/complex spectrum. Unlike the inhibition-dominant RM, the MRM is consistent with data from cat V1 suggesting that the net effect of cortical interactions is to boost simple cell responses at the preferred orientation. These results suggest that the MFM is well suited for explaining orientation tuning in simple cells, whereas the standard RM is for complex cells. The assignment of the RM to complex cells also avoids conflicts between the RM and the experiments of cortical inactivation (done on simple cells) and the spatial-frequency dependence of orientation tuning (found in simple cells). Since orientation-tuned V1 cells show a continuum of simple- to complex-cell behavior, the MRM provides the best description of V1 data. http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu/publications/orient-models.pdf -- Ning Qian, Ph. D. Associate Professor Ctr. Neurobiology & Behavior Columbia University / NYSPI Kolb Annex, Rm 519 1051 Riverside Drive, Box 87 New York, NY 10032, USA http://brahms.cpmc.columbia.edu nq6 at columbia.edu 212-543-6931 ext 600 (Office) 212-543-5816 (Fax) From jqc at tuebingen.mpg.de Fri May 5 05:50:51 2006 From: jqc at tuebingen.mpg.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Joaquin_Qui=F1onero_Candela?=) Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 11:50:51 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Gaussian Processes Message-ID: <445B1FFB.3080301@tuebingen.mpg.de> [apologies for multiple postings] Dear Connectionists, I am happy to announce the Workshop on Gaussian Processes in Practice Bletchley Park, U.K. 12th & 13th June 2006 http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/ml/gpip/ The submission deadline is Friday May 19th. It is our intention to create a post-proceedings for the workshop. Confirmed speakers include David MacKay Carl Rasmussen Ed Snelson Chris Williams Dieter Fox Aaron Hertzmann Raquel Urtasun Best regards, -- Joaquin Qui?onero Candela From drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Sat May 6 04:10:21 2006 From: drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk (David R. Hardoon) Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 09:10:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: Job announcement References: Message-ID: <4EF4D157-8726-4AA7-87FE-FB6A71B80426@ecs.soton.ac.uk> > University of Plymouth, United Kingdom > Faculty of Technology, Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music > Research > > Research Fellow in Neuroscience of Music > Salary: ?19340 to ?21640 per year, Research Fellow Scale > > Applications are invited for a two-year (24 months) Research Fellow > post in > the Faculty of Technology at the University of Plymouth, UK, > commencing on > 01 July 2006 (negotiable). > > This post will be part of a new EPSRC-funded research project aimed > at the > development of models and tools for the application of > probabilistic machine > learning techniques to the analysis of music and brain imaging data > on music > cognition, to be developed in collaboration with University College > London > (Prof. J. Shawe-Taylor), Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, > Germany (Prof. > H. Scheich) and Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria (Prof. G. > Widmer). > > Candidates for this post are expected to have experience with brain > data > (EEG and fMRI) collection, preparation and analysis. An > interdisciplinary > background linking Cognitive Sciences or Neuroscience, and Music, > and a > post-graduate degree on an allied discipline, are highly desirable. > > > More details about the this post can be found on the web pages at: > > http://neuromusic.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/jobs.html > > More information about computer music research at the University of > Plymouth > can be found at: > > http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk > > Informal enquiries may be made to Professor Eduardo R Miranda on e- > mail: > > eduardo.miranda at plymouth.ac.uk. > > > -------------- next part -------------- From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Tue May 9 04:35:02 2006 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 10:35:02 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volume 69 (issues 10-12) Message-ID: <44605436.5020005@science.ru.nl> Neurocomputing volume 69 (issues 10-12) ------- SPECIAL PAPERS (Computational Neuroscience: Trends in Research 2006 edited by Todd Troyer) Computational Neuroscience: Trends in Research 2006 (editorial) Todd Troyer The interaction between facilitation and depression of two release mechanisms in a single synapse Lian Zhou, Robert LoMauro and Farzan Nadim Intersymbol interference in axonal transmission Patrick Crotty and William B Levy The impact of the distribution of isoforms on CaMKII activation Malin Sandstr?m, Johannes Hjorth, Anders Lansner and Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski Properties and roles of BKCa channels in cultured cerebellar granule neuron: Experimental and simulation studies Marja-Leena Linne and Tuula O. Jalonen A realistic model of rod photoreceptor for use in a retina network model Rodrigo Publio, Rodrigo F. Oliveira and Antonio C. Roque Analysis of NMDA-dependent voltage bistability in thin dendritic compartments Maciej T. Lazarewicz, Chyze-Whee Ang, Gregory C. Carlson, Douglas A. Coulter and Leif H. Finkel Technique for eliminating nonessential components in the refinement of a model of dopamine neurons Sorinel A. Oprisan and Carmen C. Canavier A parallel and efficient algorithm for multicompartment neuronal modelling Yu Zhuang Genetic algorithm for optimization and specification of a neuron model W.C. Gerken, L.K. Purvis and R.J. Butera Reconstruction and simulation for three-dimensional morphological structure of insect neurons Takayuki Yamasaki, Teijiro Isokawa, Nobuyuki Matsui, Hidetoshi Ikeno and Ryohei Kanzaki Exploring gap junction location and density in electrically coupled hippocampal oriens interneurons F. Saraga, X.L. Zhang, L. Zhang, P.L. Carlen and F.K. Skinner The role of action potential shape and parameter constraints in optimization of compartment models Christina M. Weaver and Susan L. Wearne Dendritic cable with active spines: A modelling study in the spike-diffuse-spike framework Yulia Timofeeva, Gabriel J. Lord and Stephen Coombes Dependence of the spike-triggered average voltage on membrane response properties Laurent Badel, Wulfram Gerstner and Magnus J.E. Richardson A novel approach to model neuronal signal transduction using stochastic differential equations Tiina Manninen, Marja-Leena Linne and Keijo Ruohonen Altered sensory filtering and coding properties by synaptic dynamics in the electric sense Krisztina Szaliszny?, Andr? Longtin and Leonard Maler Temporal processing in the exponential integrate-and-fire model is nonlinear Joanna Pressley and Todd W. Troyer A simple model of spike processing Aurel A. Lazar Dual-matching as a problem solved by neurons Robert L. Fry Modeling single neuron behavior using stochastic differential equations Antti Saarinen, Marja-Leena Linne and Olli Yli-Harja Modelling self-sustained rhythmic activity in lamprey hemisegmental networks Mikael Huss, Lorenzo Cangiano and Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski Role of frequency-dependent weighing of inputs on frequency regulation of a pacemaker-driven rhythm Inbar Saraf-Sinik and Yair Manor Spatiotemporal clustering of synchronized bursting events in neuronal networks Uri Barkan and David Horn Predicting synchronized neural assemblies from experimentally estimated phase-resetting curves Roberto F. Gal?n, G. Bard Ermentrout and Nathaniel N. Urban Synchronization effects using a piecewise linear map-based spiking?bursting neuron model Carlos Aguirre, Doris Campos, Pedro Pascual and Eduardo Serrano Cycle-to-cycle variability as an optimal behavioral strategy Vladimir Brezina, Alex Proekt and Klaudiusz R. Weiss Effects of correlated input and electrical coupling on synchrony in fast-spiking cell networks Abraham R. Schneider, Timothy J. Lewis and John Rinzel Event-based simulation strategy for conductance-based synaptic interactions and plasticity Michelle Rudolph and Alain Destexhe Neuronal avalanches and criticality: A dynamical model for homeostasis David Hsu and John M. Beggs Real-time simulations of networks of Hodgkin?Huxley neurons using analog circuits Q. Zou, Y. Bornat, J. Tomas, S. Renaud and A. Destexhe Robust persistent activity in neural fields with asymmetric connectivity Cl?udia Horta and Wolfram Erlhagen A new mode beyond the inverted-U region of the dopaminergic modulation of the prefrontal cortex Shoji Tanaka, Hiroaki Ebi and Koki Yamashita Collective plasticity and individual stability in cultured neuronal networks Nadav Raichman, Vladislav Volman and Eshel Ben-Jacob Attractor dynamics in a modular network model of the cerebral cortex Mikael Lundqvist, Martin Rehn and Anders Lansner Rule-based firing for network simulations William W. Lytton and Mark Stewart A biophysical model of frequency-sweep selectivity in primary auditory cortex Christian H. Kasess, Calin I. Buia and Paul H.E. Tiesinga Locomotor network modeling based on identified zebrafish neurons Daniel P. Knudsen, John T. Arsenault, Scott A. Hill, Donald M. O?Malley and Jorge V. Jos? Reward-biased probabilistic decision-making: Mean-field predictions and spiking simulations Daniel Mart?, Gustavo Deco, Paolo Del Giudice and Maurizio Mattia Influence of the neural network topology on the learning dynamics Frank Emmert-Streib A self-organizing map with homeostatic synaptic scaling Thomas J. Sullivan and Virginia R. de Sa Parametric analysis of cerebellar LTD in eyelid conditioning Horatiu Voicu and Michael D. Mauk Model of auditory prediction in the dorsal cochlear nucleus via spike-timing dependent plasticity Patrick D. Roberts, Christine V. Portfors, Nathaniel Sawtell and Richard Felix II Dynamic regulation of spike-timing dependent plasticity in electrosensory processing Patrick D. Roberts, Gerardo Lafferriere, Nathaniel Sawtell, Alan Williams and Curtis C. Bell A temporal learning rule in recurrent systems supports high spatio-temporal stochastic interactions Thomas Wennekers and Nihat Ay Stimulus specificity of cortico-cortical connections optimizes information transmission Marcelo A. Montemurro and Stefano Panzeri Population coding of electrosensory stimulus in receptor network Kazuhisa Fujita and Yoshiki Kashimori Adaptive sensory processing for efficient place coding Denis Sheynikhovich, Ricardo Chavarriaga, Thomas Str?sslin and Wulfram Gerstner Analyzing the robustness of redundant population codes in sensory and feature extraction systems Christopher J. Rozell and Don H. Johnson Storing and restoring visual input with collaborative rank coding and associative memory Martin Rehn and Friedrich T. Sommer Receptive fields of simple cells from a taxonomic study of natural images and suppression of scale redundancy Jos? M. Delgado, Antonio Turiel and N?stor Parga Disambiguation in spatial navigation with theta phase coding Hiroaki Wagatsuma and Yoko Yamaguchi External activity and the freedom to recode William B Levy and Xiangbao Wu Decision functions that can support a hippocampal model Xiangbao Wu and William B Levy Gamma oscillations in a minimal CA3 model Ashlie B. Hocking and William B Levy Independent component analysis forms place cells in realistic robot simulations B?lint Tak?cs and Andr?s L?rincz Simulating place field dynamics using spike timing-dependent plasticity X. Yu, J.J. Knierim, I. Lee and H.Z. Shouval Place field dissociation and multiple maps in hippocampus David S. Touretzky and Robert U. Muller Model of CA1 place field formation with CA3 lesioned Kit D. Longden Stimulus competition by inhibitory interference Paul H.E. Tiesinga Joint maps for orientation, eye, and direction preference in a self-organizing model of V1 James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen Computational harmonic analysis for human and robotic vision systems Jacek Turski A model of proximity measurement by the teleost nucleus isthmi Brett J. Graham and David P.M. Northmore A two-dimensional population density approach to modeling the dLGN/PGN network Marco A. Huertas and Gregory D. Smith Prenatal development of ocular dominance and orientation maps in a self-organizing model of V1 Stefanie Jegelka, James A. Bednar and Risto Miikkulainen Optimal contour integration: When additive algorithms fail Nadja Schinkel, Klaus R. Pawelzik and Udo A. Ernst A statistical basis for visual field anisotropies Neil D.B. Bruce and John K. Tsotsos Associative memory of connectivity patterns Junmei Zhu and Christoph von der Malsburg Self-organization of hierarchical visual maps with feedback connections Yiu Fai Sit and Risto Miikkulainen Extraction of an activity pattern language from EEG data Peter Andras Neurodynamical approach to the picture?word interference effect Franziska Koepke, Marco Loh, Albert Costa and Gustavo Deco A model of dual control mechanisms through anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex interactions Nicola De Pisapia and Todd S. Braver A model to explain the emergence of reward expectancy neurons using reinforcement learning and neural network Shinya Ishii, Munetaka Shidara and Katsunari Shibata Computational and neural mechanisms of task switching Jeremy R. Reynolds, Todd S. Braver, Joshua W. Brown and Stefan Van der Stigchel Phase analysis of single-trial EEGs: Phase resetting of alpha and theta rhythms Won Sup Kim and Seung Kee Han Modelling ECT effects by connectivity changes in cortical neural networks Y. Gu, G. Halnes, H. Liljenstr?m, D. von Rosen, B. Wahlund and H. Liang Brain mechanisms for interleaving routine and creative action Alan H. Bond A computational model of anterior intraparietal (AIP) neurons Erhan Oztop, Hiroshi Imamizu, Gordon Cheng and Mitsuo Kawato Methods for finding and validating neural spike patterns J. Vincent Toups and Paul H.E. Tiesinga Smoothing and thresholding in neuronal spike detection Nhamoinesu Mtetwa and Leslie S. Smith Comparison of automated parameter estimation methods for neuronal signaling networks Antti Pettinen, Olli Yli-Harja and Marja-Leena Linne A segmentation algorithm for zebra finch song at the note level Ping Du and Todd W. Troyer A spike sorting framework using nonparametric detection and incremental clustering Mingzhou (Joe) Song and Hongbin Wang Deficiencies in traditional measures of in vitro hippocampal rhythms J.A. Gillis, L. Zhang and F.K. Skinner ------- JOURNAL SITE: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/neucom SCIENCE DIRECT: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5660-2006-999309989-622193 From wduch at is.umk.pl Tue May 9 06:35:43 2006 From: wduch at is.umk.pl (Wlodzislaw Duch) Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 12:35:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Papers on computational creativity and semantic memory for avatars Message-ID: <001b01c67354$53071ce0$6401a8c0@duchnote> Dear Connectionist, your comments on the following papers will be appreciated: =============================================== Duch W (2006) Creativity and the Brain. A Handbook of Creativity for Teachers. Ed. Ai-Girl Tan (forthcoming) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Creativity-Brain.html Neurocognitive approach to higher cognitive functions that bridges the gap between psychological and neural level of description is introduced. Relevant facts about the brain, working memory and representation of symbols in the brain are summarized. Putative brain processes responsible for problem solving, intuition, skill learning and automatization are described. The role of non-dominant brain hemisphere in solving problems requiring insight is conjectured. Two factors seem to be essential for creativity: imagination constrained by experience, and filtering that selects most interesting solutions. Experiments with paired words association are analyzed in details and evidence for stochastic resonance effects is found. Brain activity in the process of invention of novel words is proposed as the simplest way to understand creativity using experimental and computational means. Perspectives on computational models of creativity are discussed. =============================================== Duch W (2006) Computational Creativity. World Congres on Computational Intelligence, Vancouver, 16-21 July 2006 (in print) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Creativity.html Creative thinking is one of the hallmarks of human-level competence. Although it is still a poorly understood subject speculative ideas about brain processes involved in creative thinking may be implemented in computational models. A review of different approaches to creativity, insight and intuition is presented. Two factors are essential for creativity: imagination and selection or filtering. Imagination should be constrained by experience, while filtering in the case of creative use of words may be based on semantic and phonological associations. Analysis of brain processes involved in invention of new words leads to practical algorithms that create many interesting and novel names associated with a set of keywords. =============================================== Szymanski J, Sarnatowicz T, Duch W (2006) Towards Avatars with Artificial Minds: Role of Semantic Memory. Journal of Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligence, American Scientific Publishers (in print) http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/06-Avatars.html The first step towards creating avatars with human-like artificial minds is to give them human-like memory structures with an access to general knowledge about the world. This type of knowledge is stored in semantic memory. Although many approaches to modeling of semantic memories have been proposed they are not very useful in real life applications because they lack knowledge comparable to the common sense that humans have, and they cannot be implemented in a computationally efficient way. The most drastic simplification of semantic memory leading to the simplest knowledge representation that is sufficient for many applications is based on the Concept Description Vectors (CDVs) that store, for each concept, an information whether a given property is applicable to this concept or not. Unfortunately even such simple information about real objects or concepts is not available. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources are described. Haptek-based talking head that has an access to this memory has been created as an example of a humanized interface (HIT) that can interact with web pages and exchange information in a natural way. A few examples of applications of an avatar with semantic memory are given, including the twenty questions game and automatic creation of word puzzles. =============================================== Duch W, Szymanski J, Sarnatowicz T (2005) Concept description vectors and the 20 question game. Intelligent Information Processing and Web Mining, Advances in Soft Computing, Springer Verlag (2005) 41-50 http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/publications/kmk/05-CDV20Q.html Knowledge of properties that are applicable to a given object is a necessary prerequisite to formulate intelligent question. Concept description vectors provide simplest representation of this knowledge, storing for each object information about the values of its properties. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources, are described. Information collected in this way is used to formulate questions that have high discriminating power in the twenty questions game. =============================================== More papers may be found at: http://www.is.umk.pl/~duch/cv/papall.html Comparison of classification results and logical rules extracted from many datasets: http://www.fizyka.umk.pl/kmk/projects/datasets.html With best regards, Wlodzislaw Duch ______________________________________________________ Prof. Wlodzislaw Duch Dept. of Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland; School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Google: Duch From l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de Wed May 10 11:34:59 2006 From: l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 17:34:59 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Bernstein Award 2006 Message-ID: <17506.2083.620759.498715@huxley.biologie.hu-berlin.de> Dear All, I would like to draw your attention to the Bernstein Award, which offers a superb research opportunity for excellent young researchers in the field of Computational Neuroscience. Please forward to promising candidates. Laurenz Wiskott. ============================================================================== Bernstein Award 2006 - Young Scientists Research Award in Computational Neuroscience The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has established the National Network for Computational Neuroscience with four high-performing Bernstein Centers for Computational Neuroscience as the major structural elements. The "Bernstein Award" is equipped with up to 1.250 Mio Euro in the form of a grant over a period of five years. It will be awarded to a highly qualified young researcher, considering the candidates' verifiable research profile in the field of computational neuroscience and the scientific concept for a future young research group. Young researchers can apply for their own position and group. The group funded by the Bernstein Award will become an integral part of the National Network for Computational Neuroscience. Future announcements of the Bernstein-Award are in the scope of the Ministry's planning. The grant is provided for a scientific project of a young research group headed by a postdoc regardless of nationality. The project will be conducted at a German university or research institution within or outside the Bernstein Centers. It is a prerequisite for funding that the university or research institution concerned employs the young researcher during the funding period and supports him/her with the basic equipment in terms of laboratory space and other infrastructure. A statement made to that effect by the receiving institution must be included with the project outline to be submitted. Deadline for applications is June 30th, 2006. For more detailed information about the Bernstein Centers and the Bernstein-Award including application conditions please visit www.bernstein-zentren.de/en/index.php www.bernstein-zentren.de/en/278.php ============================================================================== From juergen at idsia.ch Wed May 10 05:43:08 2006 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:43:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Music & Machine Learning: Sarntal Course Sept 17-29 Message-ID: <7d73de1cef8377787bfd321807958c28@idsia.ch> Music, Interactive Conducting, and Machine Learning A two-week course in the beautiful Sarntal, Sept 17-29, 2006 Overview. In exciting theoretical and practical sessions we will apply machine learning techniques to problems related to music, and use augmented reality techniques to construct a virtual orchestra. Gifted students of TU Muenchen, Univ. Erlangen-Nuernberg, Univ. Stuttgart are encouraged to apply. Possible group projects include: 1. Automatic music classification through the universal distance measure 2. Learning musical taste through boosting methods 3. Learning to compose music through recurrent neural nets 4. Gesture recognition for conductor patterns 5. Sibelius Interface: simultaneous musical score and video/audio of orchestra 6. Low Latency Home Conductor: thin client (notebook with camera) operates via WWW on a network of music processors 7. Tracking the conductor's eye - only the viewed instrument reacts to gestures Lecturers: Prof. Bernd Br?gge, TUM, Germany Prof. J?rgen Schmidhuber, TUM Prof. Asim Smailagic, CMU, USA Guest: Key-Thomas M?rkl, Bavarian Symphonic Orchestra Instructions and more: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/sarntal.html From M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk Fri May 12 12:50:36 2006 From: M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk (M.Casey@surrey.ac.uk) Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 17:50:36 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information Fusion: Extended Deadline - Final Call Message-ID: Due to increasing demand and the usual time pressures, please note the revised deadlines for student paper submissions (5 June) and discussion abstracts (3 July). To secure accommodation, participants are still advised to register by the 15 May due to the high demand during the summer period. My apologies if you receive multiple copies of this e-mail. ============================================================================================ International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Information Fusion Second Call for Contributions Tuesday 22 August - Wednesday 23 August 2006, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ias/workshops/biif/ ============================================================================================ We invite contributions to an international workshop on biologically inspired information fusion. The workshop is designed to bring together complementary researchers in the broad areas of computer science, engineering, psychology and biology who have an interest in the multi-disciplinary aspects of information fusion. The programme consists of tutorials from discipline leaders, discussions, and research student poster and oral presentations. Contributions are being sought for the discussion sessions and research student presentations from all of the target disciplines: computer science, engineering, psychology and biology. Confirmed tutorial guests include: Professor Barry Stein, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine Dr Gemma Calvert, Multisensory Research Group in the Department of Psychology, University of Bath ============================================================================================ Natural and Artificial Multi-sensory Processing The ability to process, interpret and act upon sensory information is perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of human and animal cognition. Our sensory systems process large volumes of information at different scales in short periods of time, far out-performing current artificial systems, which struggle to usefully process just a single modality of information. For example, whereas speech recognition systems have achieved real-time continuous operation, artificial systems, designed for vision or olfaction are far less advanced, yet the combination of different information sources, or senses, may help overcome some of the processing limitations. This disparity between natural and artificial cognitive systems has been recognised in the recent UK Foresight Cognitive Systems Review, which suggests that our understanding of both natural and artificial systems of sensory processing can be achieved through collaboration between life and physical scientists. About the Workshop The workshop is sponsored by the University of Surrey's Institute of Advanced Studies. The aim is to promote collaboration between disciplines to develop an understanding of how to build adaptive information fusion systems by improving our knowledge from both natural and artificial systems research. The programme is designed to facilitate a cross-discipline understanding of multi-sensory fusion, with discussions on key topics and future directions, and presentation of current ideas. This is to be achieved through tutorials from leaders in each of the target disciplines, brainstorming and debate sessions lead by relevant researchers, and both oral and poster presentations from research students. Example topics include, but are not limited to: Sensory and multi-sensory processing: neurobiology, behaviour, computational modelling and artificial sensors - Vision, audition, olfaction, taste, touch - Attention: pre-attention or task-driven attention - Emotional bias on senses - Artificial sensors Information fusion and multi-modal systems: - Computer vision, speech processing, gesture recognition - Sensor fusion - Multiple regressor or classifier systems - Biometrics, human-computer interaction, intelligent systems - Bio-logically inspired robotics ============================================================================================ Discussions Topics for the discussion sessions should aim to promote new or controversial ideas, perhaps posing unanswered questions related to the workshop. These should be in the form of abstracts (maximum 500 words) stating the key topic of discussion and highlighting possible solutions and current points of view. Proposals for debates, where two participants offer their point of view prior to discussion, should be clearly highlighted. All contributions will be peer reviewed by the workshop programme committee. Those with accepted topics will be invited to give a 10 minute presentation of their idea. For sessions focused around a debate, both participants will be invited to present their ideas in a 10 minute slot each, prior to discussion. An open brainstorming session will then follow for 50 minutes with a focus on initially evaluating the proposed idea or giving thoughts on unanswered questions. Notes and outcomes of these sessions will be recorded. Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk by the deadline: 3 July 2006. ============================================================================================ Student Presentations Papers are invited from research students only to promote discussion of new ideas and to foster training and development of new researchers. All papers will be peer reviewed by the workshop programme committee to assess originality, significance, quality and clarity. Those students with accepted papers will be invited to either present a poster or to give a 20 minute oral presentation. Papers should not exceed 6 pages in length, including references, tables, figures and appendices, and should follow the LNCS format, details of which can be found at http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,3-164-2-72376-0,00.html. Papers should be submitted via e-mail to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk by the deadline: 5 June 2006. ============================================================================================ Enquiries regarding abstract and paper submission should be directed to biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk. Abstracts and papers will be available to workshop attendees via the website and printed proceedings. After the workshop, participants will be invited to submit papers based upon their work to two journal special issues (journals to be confirmed). These will contain a mixture of review/discussion articles and presentations of current research work. ============================================================================================ Important Dates 5 June 2006 Deadline for submitting student papers 3 July 2006 Notification of acceptance of student papers 3 July 2006 Deadline for submitting discussion abstracts 31 July 2006 Camera ready student papers 31 July 2006 Notification of acceptance of discussion abstracts 22-23 August 2006 Workshop at the University of Surrey Guests looking for accommodation on campus (the cheapest in Guildford) are advised to register by the 15 May 2006. Otherwise, registration is open up until the workshop. For papers to be presented at the workshop, all guests must be registered by the 31 July 2006 to secure a place on the programme. Further information can be obtained from: - Website: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ias/workshops/biif/ - Enquiries about paper submission: biif2006 at surrey.ac.uk - General and administrative enquiries: Mrs Gautier O'Shea, S.Gautier at surrey.ac.uk; Mrs Heather Norman, H.Norman at surrey.ac.uk - Dr Matthew Casey, M.Casey at surrey.ac.uk; tel. +44 (0)1483 689635 - Dr Paul Sowden, P.Sowden at surrey.ac.uk - Dr Hujun Yin, Hujun.Yin at manchester.ac.uk - Dr Tony Browne, A.Browne at surrey.ac.uk From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Sat May 13 04:38:51 2006 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 09:38:51 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder and Venue Change: Gatsby Annual Seminar In-Reply-To: <20060421144404.GF3517@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> References: <20060113094900.GC23422@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <20060421144404.GF3517@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20060513083851.GA2124@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> There has been a change in venue for the Gatsby Unit Annual Seminar which is happening this Wednesday. It will take place in the Leolin Price Lecture Theatre, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, very close to Queen Square. 17 May 2006 2.30pm Gatsby Unit Annual Seminar We are delighted to announce the first in an annual series of Gatsby Seminars, with talks by distinguished researchers in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. This year's talks will be given by Dr Li Zhaoping, from the Dept of Psychology at UCL, and Prof John Shawe-Taylor, from the Dept of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. They will be held at 2.30pm in the Leolin Price Lecture Theatre at the ICH, and will be followed by a wine reception at 5.00pm at The Gatsby Unit, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square Titles and abstracts below. All are welcome. --------------------------------------------- 2.30pm: Dr Li Zhaoping The More Briefly one Looks, the More Effectively one `Sees': Vision by V1 I show that a visual search task can be better performed when one views the search array for a shorter time, and suggest an account of this phenomenon based on an analysis of V1's contribution to vision. The cost of a prolonged view comes from the interference of higher level object recognition on lower level image feature processing. A similar effect underlies the trick for art novices of drawing a portrait upside down in order to reproduce lower level image features, such as contours, with less interference from higher level face cognition. In our task, the search target has an uniquely oriented bar but is identical in shape to distractors. Lower level image feature processes enable the unique orientation to pop out, attracting gaze towards the target. Subsequently, higher level object processes, involving focused attention, recognize the target object in a viewpoint invariant manner, confusing the target as being a distractor and interfering with the task. Lower and higher processes lead to their respective behavioural decisions manifested in eye movements and ultimate task performances. I will show physiological and computational evidence implicating V1 mechanisms for the lower level feature pop out, and review data about higher object processes in higher brain areas. 3.45pm: Prof John Shawe-Taylor Inferring Semantic Representations from Data The talk addresses the question of how effectively we can learn underlying semantics from data. We concentrate on text analysis as a domain where semantics are relatively cleanly defined and on which learning approaches have made significant advances. The links between Latent Semantic Indexing, Latent Semantic Kernels and kernel Principal Components Analysis are discussed and the generalisation of such representations is discussed. Cross-lingual information retrieval suggests the use of Canonical Correlation Analysis as a Semantic inference tool. Again a kernel version can be defined and with appropriate regularisation applied in high-dimensional feature spaces. Applications of the same approach to non-text data will also be presented. ------------------------------------------ From oby at cs.tu-berlin.de Tue May 16 07:50:13 2006 From: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de (Klaus Obermayer) Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 13:50:13 +0200 (MEST) Subject: Connectionists: MSc in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, attached please find the announcement of a new Master program in Computational Neuroscience. Cheers Klaus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer phone: 49-30-314-73442 FR2-1, NI, Fakultaet IV 49-30-314-73120 Technische Universitaet Berlin fax: 49-30-314-73121 Franklinstrasse 28/29 e-mail: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de 10587 Berlin, Germany http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/ ======================================================================== International Master of Science in Computational Neuroscience Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Germany The Berlin University of Technology, the Charite Medical School and the Humboldt University of Berlin solicit applications for a new international Master program in Computational Neuroscience within the newly established Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (http://www.cns-berlin.org/). The program is full-time for four semesters, and will start in October 2006. Course language is English. There are no tuition fees. Computational neuroscience is a new research discipline, which reflects the fact that understanding the functioning brain requires a multidisciplinary approach. It combines experiments with data analysis and computer simulations on the basis of well-defined theoretical concepts, and makes a scientific language available that can be used across disciplines and levels for neurobiology, cognitive science, and information technology. Computational Neuroscience may thus help to solve long-standing research questions, contribute to better prevention and treatment strategies for neural disorders, lead to unified concepts about biological processes, advance information technologies and human-machine interactions and, last but not least, provide new insight for designing efficient strategies for teaching and learning. The MSc program in Computational Neuroscience will provide students with knowledge and skills in a wide range of theoretical techniques which are under intensive use in the Neurosciences and which are also at the core of modern AI and machine learning research. During the first year, modules on -- Models of Neural Systems -- Models of Higher Brain Function -- Acquisition and Analysis of Neural Data -- Machine Intelligence jointly taught by experimentalists and theoreticians will lay the disciplinary foundation. During the second year extensive experimental and theoretical project work: -- lab rotations -- Master thesis will train the students' ability to conduct scientific research. Emphasis will be put on a broad, interdisciplinary education with strong interactions between experiment and theory. The program is taught by the faculty of the Bernstein Center, who represent university departments ranging from biology and medicine to physics and computer science at the three major universities in Berlin. Application deadline: June 16th, 2006 for the winter term 2006/2007. Students with a a solid mathematical background and a completed B.Sc. or equivalent degree (completed at the time the courses start) are welcome to apply. For more information and application procedures see www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de or send email to sekr at cs.tu-berlin.de. Admission for the winter term 2006/2007 depends on the final approval of the program by the Senatsverwaltung f?r Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur. From oby at cs.tu-berlin.de Tue May 16 12:48:21 2006 From: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de (Klaus Obermayer) Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:48:21 +0200 (MEST) Subject: Connectionists: new SVM software available Message-ID: Dear All, I would like to announce a fast SMO implementation of the P-SVM, a new SVM method for dyadic data. The software is available for downloading via the web-address: http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/software/ using the link "PSVM". The P-SVM is described in detail in the recent publication: S. Hochreiter and K. Obermayer, Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data, Neural Computation 18, 1472-1510. An abstract is attached. All the best Klaus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support Vector Machines for Dyadic Data S. Hochreiter & K. Obermayer We describe a new technique for the analysis of dyadic data, where two sets of objects ("row" and "column" objects) are characterized by a matrix of numerical values which describe their mutual relationships. The new technique, called "Potential Support Vector Machine" (P-SVM), is a large-margin method for the construction of classifiers and regression functions for the "column" objects. Contrary to standard support vector machine approaches, the P-SVM minimizes a scale-invariant capacity measure and requires a new set of constraints. As a result, the P-SVM method leads to a usually sparse expansion of the classification and regression functions in terms of the "row" rather than the "column" objects and can handle data and kernel matrices which are neither positive definite nor square. We then describe two complementary regularization schemes. The first scheme improves generalization performance for classification and regression tasks, the second scheme leads to the selection of a small, informative set of "row" "support" objects and can be applied to feature selection. Benchmarks for classification, regression, and feature selection tasks are performed with toy data as well as with several real world data sets. The results show, that the new method is at least competitive with but often performs better than the benchmarked standard methods for standard vectorial as well as for true dyadic data sets. In addition, a theoretical justification is provided for the new approach. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer phone: 49-30-314-73442 FR2-1, NI, Fakultaet IV 49-30-314-73120 Technische Universitaet Berlin fax: 49-30-314-73121 Franklinstrasse 28/29 e-mail: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de 10587 Berlin, Germany http://ni.cs.tu-berlin.de/ From l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de Wed May 17 09:21:24 2006 From: l.wiskott at biologie.hu-berlin.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 15:21:24 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD-Student or Postdoc position in Computational Neuroscience at the ITB in Berlin Message-ID: <17515.9044.778030.170627@huxley.biologie.hu-berlin.de> Please forward this job advertisement to students who might be interested. Thanks, Laurenz Wiskott. ___________________________________________________________________________ Open Position for a PhD-Student or Postdoc in Computational Neuroscience at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~wiskott/jobs.html ___________________________________________________________________________ Institute: Institute for Theoretical Biology Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin Invalidenstra?e 43 D-10115 Berlin, Germany http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/ The Institute for Theoretical Biology is a young and dynamic lab with three full professors, four junior research groups, and about 60 students and researchers doing interdisciplinary and innovative research in different areas of theoretical biology. Research group: The position is available in the junior research group led by Dr. Laurenz Wiskott and is funded by the BMBF through the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin. Research topics: The goal of this project is to build a model of the visual system based on the ideas of slow feature analysis with particual emphasis on questions of attentional control. The project is part of a collaboration with the experimental group of Dr. Stephan Brandt at the Charit? Medical School in Berlin. Teaching: There will be some duties as a teaching assistant, e.g. for the basic mathematics courses. Time: The position will be available September 2006. A different starting date might be negotiable. The appointment will be for 1+2 years. Requirements: Candidates should have an education in physics, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering or any related field. Required are strong mathematical and programming skills as well as the ability to communicate and work well in a team. Candidates who have not worked in the field of computational neuroscience yet are also encouraged to apply. Salary: Salary will be BAT IIa-O (part time for a PhD student) and will depend on age and family status. BAT is the regular salary scale for public employees in Germany. Inquiries: Informal inquiries can be addressed to Dr. Laurenz Wiskott . Application: Complete applications should be sent to Dr. Laurenz Wiskott at the address given above. Please send only copies and not original documents, since the applications will not be sent back. You can also send applications via email, but please make sure they are complete and in a convenient format. Handicapped applicants with corresponding qualifications will be considered preferentially. To increase the proportion of female scientists, applications of qualified females are especially welcome. Deadline: None. Application will be accepted until the position is filled, as will be indicated on the web-page of this job advertisement; see below. WWW: The following web page contains additional information: http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~wiskott/jobs.html. From stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk Wed May 17 10:13:15 2006 From: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk (Stefan Wermter) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 15:13:15 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Job: Postdoctoral Research Scientist Neuro-Robotics Message-ID: <446B2F7B.10207@sunderland.ac.uk> Job announcement: Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Neuro-Robotics School of Computing & Technology, University of Sunderland Research Scientist Neuro-Robotics (MICRAM) Fixed term ? three years 19,340 - 29,211 pounds per annum Ref: CTR016/1154 Our focus in the MICRAM project is to develop and validate biomimetic robots, computational neural models and a neuroscience database for the development of a biologically realistic model of auditory processing (MICRAM project). The job involves the development of a biomimetic robot that uses neural computational modeling to simulate the auditory midbrain. You should be educated to PhD level or possess equivalent research experience and a proven ability in research and publication. A degree in a computing discipline is essential and knowledge of biomimetic robotics is desirable. Experience with GENESIS or similar neural modelling and knowledge of the auditory system and of bioacoustics would be advantageous. This neuro-robotics post is part of a collaboration between the University of Sunderland (neural robotics post -- this announcement) and the University of Newcastle (auditory neuroscience post -- to be announced). For more info on the Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems see http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ For informal discussions of this neuro-robotics post please contact Dr. Harry Erwin ( harry.erwin at sunderland.ac.uk ) or Prof. Stefan Wermter ( stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk ). Interviews for this post will be held on Monday 19th June 2006. Application form and Role Profile can be obtained by contacting Human Resources on 0191 515 2057 or www.sunderland.ac.uk/jobs Closing Date: 2nd June 2006 *************************************** Stefan Wermter Professor for Intelligent Systems Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems School of Computing and Technology University of Sunderland St Peters Way Sunderland SR6 0DD United Kingdom email: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0stw/ http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ **************************************** From ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp Wed May 17 03:30:58 2006 From: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp (Masumi Ishikawa) Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 16:30:58 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP for BrainIT2006 Message-ID: <6.0.0.20.2.20060517162633.023a3c70@mail.brain.kyutech.ac.jp> 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS Welcome to BrainIT 2006 The third international conference, BrainIT 2006, will be held in Kitakyushu, Japan, on September 27-29, 2006, in order to establish the foundations of the Brain-Inspired Information Technology. All working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology including Robotics are invited to participate in the third international conference, BrainIT 2006. At this conference, we will organize special sessions on the results of our COE research program in addition to invited papers from a wide range of fields from Brain Science to Information Technology. INVITED SPEAKERS Special Session Mitsuo Kawato (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Japan) Invited Sessions Asla Pitkanen (University of Kuopio, Finland) Andreas G. Andreou (Johns Hopkins University, USA) Helge Ritter (Bielefeld University, Germany) Rodney Douglas (University/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Yoshihiko Nakamura (The University of Tokyo, Japan) Lamp Session Ryohei Kanzaki (The University of Tokyo, Japan) IMPORTANT DATES Abstract (for presentation) Submission Deadline: June 12, 2006 Notification of Acceptance: July 14, 2006 Early Registration Deadline: September 5, 2006 SCOPE AND TOPICS BrainIT 2006 solicits experimental, computational, theoretical as well as engineering papers related to the topics in the following non-exhaustive, non-exclusive categories. Categories: 1. Vision systems 2. Other sensory systems 3. Cognition?& Languages 4. Learning and Memory 5. Behavior & Emotion 6. Motor controls 7. Dynamics 8. Neural computation 9. Neural networks 10.Brain-inspired intelligent machines Papers that bridge brain science and information technology are especially welcome. Regular papers may include speculative discussions on Brain-Inspired Information Technology. BrainIT 2006 is open to all working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology (modeling and hardware realization) and provides the opportunity for presenting and discussing ideas that pave the way for the new field, Brain-Inspired Information Technology. Instructions for Authors Authors for poster presentation must submit a 1-page A4-sized abstract electronically via our web site, though submissions by e-mail are also available. Only PDF files are acceptable.?Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two reviewers.?Abstracts selected by reviewers are asked to present in a Selected Paper Session, an oral session. BrainIT2006 will publish an edited book as before. For further information, please refer to our web site. Registration Registration is free of charge. However, we recommend your early registration as the number of abstract books and other materials may be limited. Sponsors - "World of brain computing interwoven out of animals and robots": The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan - Kyushu Institute of Technology - Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute (FLSI) - Kitakyushu Foundation for the Advancement of Industry, Science and Technology (FAIS) Contact us Secretariat: Tetsuo FURUKAWA, PhD, Professor Phone: +81-93-695-6124, Fax: +81-93-695-6134 E-mail: secretariat at brain-it.brain.kyutech.ac.jp For more information, please visit our web site: http://conf.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/~brain-it/ Masumi Ishikawa Department of Brain Science and Engineering Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering Kyushu Institute of Technology 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu 808-0196, Japan Tel and Fax: +81-93-695-6106 Email: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp URL: http://www.brain.kyutech.ac.jp/~ishikawa URL: http://www.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/ From Randy.OReilly at colorado.edu Fri May 19 13:41:43 2006 From: Randy.OReilly at colorado.edu (Randall C. O'Reilly) Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 11:41:43 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: CCNC Conference: Extended Deadline & Submission Website Avail In-Reply-To: <200604142347.38871.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> References: <200604142347.38871.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> Message-ID: <200605191141.43513.Randy.OReilly@colorado.edu> Updates: * The deadline for submission has been extended to June 15, 2006 * The website for submitting is now operational: http://www.conference.org/page5.html * We are planning a special issue of the newly reorganized Brain Research journal for papers from this meeting -- indicate interest with your abstract submission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Call for Abstracts ~ 2ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE www.ccnconference.org To be held in conjunction with the 2006 PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY CONFERENCE, November 16-19, 2006 at the Hilton Americas hotel in Houston, TX. * CONFERENCE DATES: Wed-Thu November 15 & 16, 2006 The inaugural CCNC 2005 meeting held prior to Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in Washington DC was a great success with approximately 250 attendees 60 presented posters and strongly positive reviews. In future years it will continue to be held on a rotating basis with other meetings such as (tentative list): Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) and Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: June 15, 2006 (EXTENDED) Abstracts to be submitted online via the website: www.ccnconference.org/page5.html Like last year, there will be two categories of submissions: -Poster only -Poster, plus short talk (15 min) to highlight the poster Abstracts should be no more than 500 words. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing for posters will be inclusive and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Short talks will be selected on the basis of research quality relevance to conference theme and expected accessibility in a talk format. Abstracts not selected for short talks will still be accepted as posters as long as they meet appropriateness criteria. * NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: July 15, 2005 (NEW DATE) __________________________________________________________________________ Preliminary Program: * 2006 Keynote Speakers (confirmed): Mike Kahana, University of Pennsylvania Mark Seidenberg, University of Wisconsin Madison * 3 Symposia, selected from submitted proposals, that will be discussion oriented and include a mixture of modelers and non-modelers, all focused on a common theme or issue. * 12 short talks featuring selected posters * Poster sessions ___________________________________________________________________________ 2006 Planning Committee: Suzanna Becker, McMaster University Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado, Boulder David Noelle, Vanderbilt University Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown University Medical Center Executive Organizer: Thomas Hazy, University of Colorado, Boulder For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit: www.ccnconference.org From crismin at cs.toronto.edu Sat May 20 06:40:04 2006 From: crismin at cs.toronto.edu (Cristian Sminchisescu) Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 06:40:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: Summer visitor internships in Computer Vision, Neural Processing and Machine Learning, TTI-Chicago In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, Please find below an advertisement for research-oriented internships available in the area of Computer Vision (with emphasis on neural processing and machine learning) at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Thank you for considering this and best regards, Cristian Sminchisescu ============================================================================ SUMMER VISITOR INTERNSHIPS TOYOTA TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE AT CHICAGO (TTI-C) A number of summer visitor internships are available in the area of Computer Vision, Neural Processing and Machine Learning at the TTI-C institute (www.tti-c.org) inside the University of Chicago, USA, during the period May 15th-October 15th 2006. These internships are only available to (typically advanced) PhD. students at US universities (e.g. F-1 students or any students who already are in possession of a legal document to study / work in the US). There are possibilities for longer or shorter stages (> 3 months), depending on the candidate. The visiting interns will work, together with Dr. Cristian Sminchisescu (http://tti.uchicago.edu/~crismin), on projects related to general visual processing algorithms including biologically inspired visual architectures (like HMAX, convolutional neural networks, sparse coding), numerical optimization (non-convex continuous methods for non-linear architectures), as well as human motion sensing (2d human detection and localization, 3d human modeling and 3d reconstruction, etc) from video sequences. Different focus options are available depending on the interests and strengths of the candidate. See, for example, the following tutorial for an overview on some of the topics: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~crismin/PAPERS/tutorial_iccv05.pdf The work is strongly research oriented, targeting to make contributions that can be published at high-profile international conferences . hence this may also involve building a prototype and testing it thoroughly. Willing to work with real image sequences is essential. A strong background in computer vision and machine learning or optimization is desired. Good programming experience with (at least some of) the following environments is essential: C/C++, graphics modeling libraries (OpenInventor, OpenGL), animation packages (Maya, Poser), or scientific programming environments (Matlab). --> APPLICATION PROCESS: Please send a CV (including the name of at least 3 referees who may be asked for recommendation letters) and a brief letter of interests to Cristian Sminchisescu at: crismin at nagoya.uchicago.edu --> STIPEND: The visiting students will be paid the monthly salary: 3200 USD. --> LOCATION: TTI-C is located in Hyde Park (an exciting place to live in the vibrant city of Chicago which offers a wide range of attractions including jazz, classical and modern music and theater, and exciting recreational areas at lake Michigan) on the University of Chicago campus and has a close affiliation with the UofC CS Department. It has excellent computing and working facilities and faculty members with strong interests in AI, computer vision, machine learning, approximation theory and scientific computing (http://www.tti-c.org/faculty.html). =============================================================================== From feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Mon May 22 22:00:08 2006 From: feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Jerome Feldman) Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 19:00:08 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: 2 New Papers Message-ID: <44726CA8.9030200@icsi.berkeley.edu> There are two new ICSI Technical Reports on which we invite comment. The first one, on the binding problem, is quite specialized and will be submitted for publication in some form at some time. There is an accompanying web site with a demo simulation system that you can play with and the code is also available. The second TR is a general discussion of the problem of concept learning from a connectionist perspective. It will (eventually) appear in an edited book on Fodor's Platonist argument for the innateness of concepts. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "A (Somewhat) New Solution to the Binding Problem" L. Barrett, J. Feldman, L. Mac Dermed ICSI Technical Report TR-06-001 May 2006 PDF Overview: To perform automatic, unconscious inference, the human brain must solve the "binding problem" by correctly grouping properties with objects. We propose a structured connectionist model that uses short signatures, rather than temporal synchrony or other means, to achieve this binding. The proposed system models our ability to perform unification and also to handle multiple instantiations of logical terms, among other things. To verify its feasibility, we simulate our prototype with a computer program modeling simple neuron-like elements. The web site with demos, etc is: http://fluents.barrettnexus.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "It?s the Body, Stupid: Concept Learning According to Cognitive Science" B. Bergen and J. Feldman, ICSI Technical Report TR-06-002, April 2006 PDF Overview: The classical question "How do people learn new concepts?" is answered by Unified Cognitive Science. Converging evidence from several disciplines suggests that: 1) Our core concepts are based on the neural embodiment of all our sensory, motor, planning, emotional, social, etc. abilities, most of which we share with other primates. 2) We can only be aware of or talk about a limited range of parameters over these abilities and human languages are based on these parameterizations, plus composition. Composition can give rise to additional abilities and parameters. 3) The meanings of all new words and concepts are formed by compositions of previously known concepts. We use a wide range of compositional operations including conjunction, causal links, abstraction, analogy, metaphor, etc. 4) Domain relations, particularly conceptual metaphors, are the central compositional operations that allow us to learn technical and other abstract concepts. 5) We understand language by mapping it to our accumulated experience and imagining (simulating) the consequences. From cns at cnsorg.org Tue May 23 22:33:21 2006 From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS) Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 19:33:21 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: CNS Special accomodation rates and registration Message-ID: <20060524022942.M38861@cnsorg.org> The annual Computational Neuroscience meeting will be held in Edinburgh, UK from July 16th- 20th, 2006. Please note that in order to receive special accomodation rates for the meeting you MUST make your reservations before May 31st, 2006. Please visit www.cnsorg.org to make reservations. Early registration rates are available before June 15th, 2006. Please www.cnsorg.org to register for the meeting. -- CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences From stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk Wed May 24 10:02:47 2006 From: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk (Stefan Wermter) Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 15:02:47 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Stipend funding available for MSc Intelligent Systems Message-ID: <44746787.8010701@sunderland.ac.uk> Stipends available for MSc Intelligent Systems for EU students --------------------------------------------------------------- We are pleased to announce that for eligible selected EU students we can offer stipends with free fees (worth more than 3000 pounds) and a bursary of 500 pounds for our MSc Intelligent Systems. Together this stipend is worth about 5000 Euro in fees and bursary. This scheme applies to our October 2006 for selected EU students. The School of Computing and Technology, University of Sunderland is delighted to announce the launch of its MSc Intelligent Systems programme for 2006. Building on the School's leading edge research in intelligent systems this masters programme will be funded partially via the ESF programme and Women into Science programme. Intelligent Systems is an exciting field of study for science and industry since the currently existing computing systems have often not yet reached the various aspects of human performance. "Intelligent Systems" is a term to describe software systems and methods, which simulate aspects of intelligent behaviour. The intention is to learn from nature and human performance in order to build more powerful computing systems. The aim is to learn from cognitive science, neuroscience, biology, engineering, and linguistics for building more powerful computational system architectures. In this programme a wide variety of novel and exciting techniques will be taught including neural networks, intelligent robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, vision, evolutionary genetic computing, data mining, fuzzy methods, and hybrid intelligent architectures. The Bursary Scheme applies to this Masters programme commencing October 2006 and we have obtained funding through both the European Social Fund (ESF) and under the women into science programme for UK and EU students. For further information in the first instance please see: http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/Teaching_frame.html http://osiris.sund.ac.uk/webedit/allweb/courses/progmode.php?prog=G550A&mode=FT&mode2=&dmode=C Application forms: http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/teaching/sund_is_app.pdf http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/sund_is_app.doc For information and applications contact: alfredo.moscardini at sunderland.ac.uk ***Please forward to students who may be interested.*** Stefan *************************************** Stefan Wermter Professor for Intelligent Systems Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems School of Computing and Technology University of Sunderland St Peters Way Sunderland SR6 0DD United Kingdom email: stefan.wermter at sunderland.ac.uk http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0stw/ http://www.his.sunderland.ac.uk/ **************************************** From feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU Tue May 30 12:32:08 2006 From: feldman at ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (Jerome Feldman) Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 09:32:08 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: New Book: From Molecule to Metaphor Message-ID: <447C7388.5050509@icsi.berkeley.edu> My new book is now available: "From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language" The goal of the book is to establish the foundation for a Unified Cognitve Science with neural (connectionist) computation as its scientific language. Some description of the book is available from MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10907 The Amazon page, which has less to say, is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262062534/qid=1148829938/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9325650-0614566?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 As always, feedback is invited. Jerry From ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch Wed May 31 09:06:18 2006 From: ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch (Ludovic Righetti) Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 15:06:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on adaptive frequency oscillators Message-ID: <447D94CA.8010904@a3.epfl.ch> Dear Connectionist, Researchers in dynamical systems and especially in nonlinear oscillators might be interested in the following paper published in Physica D about adaptive frequency oscillators, i.e. nonlinear oscillators that can adapt to the frequency of any periodic signal. L. Righetti, J. Buchli, and A.J. Ijspeert. Dynamic Hebbian learning in adaptive frequency oscillators. Physica D, 216(2):269-281, 2006. http://birg2.epfl.ch/publications/fulltext/righetti06b.pdf Abstract: Nonlinear oscillators are widely used in biology, physics and engineering for modeling and control. They are interesting because of their synchronization properties when coupled to other dynamical systems. In this paper, we propose a learning rule for oscillators which adapts their frequency to the frequency of any periodic or pseudo-periodic input signal. Learning is done in a dynamic way: it is part of the dynamical system and not an offline process. An interesting property of our model is that it is easily generalizable to a large class of oscillators, from phase oscillators to relaxation oscillators and strange attractors with a generic learning rule. One major feature of our learning rule is that the oscillators constructed can adapt their frequency without any signal processing or the need to specify a time window or similar free parameters. All the processing is embedded in the dynamics of the adaptive oscillator. The convergence of the learning is proved for the Hopf oscillator, then numerical experiments are carried out to explore the learning capabilities of the system. Finally, we generalize the learning rule to non-harmonic oscillators like relaxation oscillators and strange attractors. More papers can be found on http://birg.epfl.ch Best regards, Ludovic Righetti -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Ludovic Righetti Research Assistant Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG) Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne EPFL - Station 14 - CH1015 Lausanne Tel: +41 21 693 6620 Fax: +41 21 693 3705 URL: http://birg.epfl.ch Email: ludovic.righetti at a3.epfl.ch ------------------------------------------------------------- From g.goodhill at imb.uq.edu.au Wed May 31 20:01:42 2006 From: g.goodhill at imb.uq.edu.au (Geoffrey Goodhill) Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:01:42 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Courses in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <447E2E66.8020503@imb.uq.edu.au> Dear Connectionists, I am keen to raise awareness of the content of undergraduate or graduate university courses in computational neuroscience that are taught worldwide. If you are involved in teaching such a course I would be very grateful to hear the following from you: - Year level / how many lectures / how many students - Any prequisites - Topics covered - Textbooks used - Type of assessment and any other issues that you think relevant (e.g. problems you often encounter). Obviously if you have a webpage or course document which has all this information already please just send me that. I will of course post a summary of responses, so please let me know if any part of your reply should be treated as confidential. Many thanks, Geoff Geoffrey J Goodhill, PhD Associate Professor Queensland Brain Institute, School of Physical Sciences & Institute for Molecular Bioscience University of Queensland St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Phone: +61 7 3346 2612 Fax: +61 7 3346 8836 Email: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au http://cns.qbi.uq.edu.au Editor-in-Chief, Network: Computation in Neural Systems http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0954898X.asp From ps629 at columbia.edu Mon May 29 21:43:00 2006 From: ps629 at columbia.edu (Paul Sajda) Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 21:43:00 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in neuroimaging and neural signal processing Message-ID: Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Neuroimaging and Neural Signal Processing Columbia University, Department of Biomedical Engineering We are currently seeking a postdoctoral fellow for appointment starting in September 2006. The fellowship will be for a two year period and focus on development of acquisition, signal processing, and machine learning algorithms for single-trial neuroimaging. The ideal candidate would have a background in signal processing and machine learning, preferably with prior experience in acquisition and processing of either EEG or fMRI data (preferably both). Programming familiarity in MATLAB is required, with knowledge of C++, C and signal acquisition and processing hardware a plus. Our group is very dynamic and includes laboratory space both on the engineering and medical school campuses. We have several high density EEG systems, 1.5 and 3T MRI scanners and a system for simultaneous acquisition of EEG/fMRI. Interested candidates should send a CV and list of 3 references to Prof. Paul Sajda (ps629 at columbia.edu). Paul Sajda, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University 351 Engineering Terrace Building, Mail Code 8904 1210 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027 tel: (212) 854-5279 fax: (212) 854-8725 email: ps629 at columbia.edu http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu From terry at salk.edu Tue May 30 13:06:28 2006 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 10:06:28 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION July, 2006 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 18, Number 7 - July 1, 2006 Note Optimal Neuronal Tuning for Finite Stimulus Spaces W. Michael Brown and Alex Baecker Letters A Fast Learning Algorithm for Deep Belief Nets Geoffrey E. Hinton, Simon Osindero and Yee-Whye Teh Optimal Tuning Widths in Population Coding of Periodic Variables Marcelo A. Montemurro and Stefano Panzeri How Inhibitory Oscillations Can Train Networks and Punish Competitors Kenneth A. Norman, Ehren Newman, Greg Detre, and Sean Polyn Temporal Decoding by Phase Locked Loops-Unique Features of Circuit Level Implementations and their Significance for Vibrissal Information Processing Miriam Zacksenhouse and Ehud Ahissar Representation and Timing inTheories of the Dopamine System Nathaniel Daw, Aaron Courville, and David Touretzky Experiments with AdaBoost.RT, an Improved Boosting Scheme for Regression D.P. Solomatine and D.L. Shrestha A Connectionist Computational Model for Epistemic and Temporal Reasoning Artur S. d'Avila Garcez and Luis Lamb ----- ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2006 - VOLUME 18 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $64.20 $114 $54 $57.78 Individual $100 $107.00 $154 $90 $96.30 Institution $730 $781.10 $784 $657 $702.99 * 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 -----