From 2012 Mon Aug 6 04:13:04 2012 From: 2012 (2012) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 10:13:04 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CHiME Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge Message-ID: <501F7C90.3020302@neuro.kuleuven.be> ---------------------------------------------- 2nd CHiME Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge Supported by IEEE AASP, MSLP and SLTC Technical Committees Deadline: January 15, 2013 Workshop: June 1, 2013, Vancouver, Canada http://spandh.dcs.shef.ac.uk/chime_challenge/ ---------------------------------------------- Following the success of the 1st PASCAL CHiME Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge, we are happy to announce a new challenge dedicated to speech recognition in real-world reverberant, noisy conditions, that will culminate in a dedicated satellite workshop of ICASSP 2013. The challenge is supported by the IEEE SPS Technical Committees AASP, MSLP and SLTC, and by an Industrial Board. FEATURED TASKS The challenge consists of recognising distant-microphone speech mixed in two-channel nonstationary noise recorded over a period of several weeks in a real family house. Entrants may address either one or both of the following tracks: Medium vocabulary track: WSJ 5k sentences uttered by a static speaker Small vocabulary track: simpler commands but small head movements TO ENTER You will find everything you need to get started (and even more) on the challenge website: - a full description of the challenge, - clean, reverberated and multi-condition training and development data, - baseline training, decoding and scoring software tools based on HTK. Submission consists of a 2- to 8-page paper describing your system and reporting its performance on the development and the test set. In addition, you are welcome to submit an earlier paper to ICASSP 2013, which will tentatively be grouped with other papers into a dedicated session. Any approach is welcome, whether emerging or established. If you are interested in participating, please email us so we can monitor interest and send you further updates about the challenge. BEST CHALLENGE PAPER AWARD The best challenge paper will distinguished by an award from the Industrial Board. IMPORTANT DATES July 2012 Launch October 2012 Test set release January 15, 2013 Challenge & workshop submission deadline February 18, 2013 Paper notification & release of the challenge results June 1, 2013 ICASSP satellite workshop INDUSTRIAL BOARD Masami Akamine, Toshiba Carlos Avendano, Audience Li Deng, Microsoft Erik McDermott, Google Gautham Mysore, Adobe Atsushi Nakamura, NTT Peder A. Olsen, IBM Trausti Thormundsson, Conexant Daniel Willett, Nuance WORKSHOP SPONSORS Conexant Systems Inc. Audience Inc. Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories ORGANISERS Emmanuel Vincent, INRIA Jon Barker, University of Sheffield Shinji Watanabe & Jonathan Le Roux, MERL Francesco Nesta & Marco Matassoni, FBK-IRST From alessandro.torcini at cnr.it Sun Aug 5 11:22:47 2012 From: alessandro.torcini at cnr.it (Alessandro Torcini) Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 17:22:47 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Two PhD positions in spike train analysis and neuronal network dynamics in Firenze In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Two PhD positions are available at Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi -- Firenze (Italy) ================================================== http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=marie-curie-itn =================================================== The Phd positions are offered within the Marie Curie Initial Training Network - ?Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies? (NETT) to work at the Institute of Complex Systems (ISC), CNR, Florence, Italy Applications are invited for the above posts to work with Dr Alessandro Torcini and Dr Thomas Kreuz in the Computational neuroscience group at ISC, Florence. This world leading group combines theoretical investigations (e.g., on nontrivial collective phenomena in neuronal populations) with practical applications (e.g., spike train analysis). The two positions are on nonlinear dynamics/complex systems with application to neuroscience, the research lines will be 1. Emergence of collective dynamics in scale-free neuronal networks (ESR14) 2. Measures of spike train synchrony (ESR15) Gross Salary per annum: 42,028 ? (Living Allowance) plus 9,290 - 13,272 ? (Mobility Allowance) depending on circumstances Required titles: MSc in Physics, Mathematics or Engineering obtained between 1 september 2008 -- 1 september 2012 --- Fluent in English Applications: The applications should be prepared and send as detailed on this webpage: http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=how-to-apply Closing date for both positions: 14 September 2012 Both full-time posts are available from 01 January 2013 and will be offered on a fixed-term contract for a period of 36 months. Contacts: Dr Thomas Kreuz (thomas.kreuz at cnr.it) or Dr Alessandro Torcini (alessandro.torcini at cnr.it) More details can be found here: http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=marie-curie-itn From alexei at bicasymposium.com Fri Aug 3 15:45:49 2012 From: alexei at bicasymposium.com (Alexei Samsonovich) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 15:45:49 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: BICA v1 available In-Reply-To: <545443D2-6CCC-424A-BAE5-EED8909F3C9F@bicasymposium.com> References: <545443D2-6CCC-424A-BAE5-EED8909F3C9F@bicasymposium.com> Message-ID: <1694E046-F8CF-46C2-840E-5C39E3170ABC@bicasymposium.com> The first volume of the new regular peer-refereed Elsevier journal "Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures" (BICA) is available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/2212683X/1 The temporary free access to the journal is given for marketing purposes to everybody. All current BICA Society members will always have unlimited online subscription to the journal. To join the BICA Society, please visit http://bicasociety.org/membership/join/ To access the journal with your BICA Society Membership ID, please follow the instructions at http://bicasociety.org/journal/ Cheers, -Alexei P.S. You still can submit a late-breaking paper or abstract for BICA 2012 in Palermo via http://chilab.dinfo.unipa.it/bica2012/instruct.html Please forward. Apologies for duplicates. From Chris at tnb.ua.ac.be Fri Aug 3 06:46:54 2012 From: Chris at tnb.ua.ac.be (Chris Ploegaert) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 12:46:54 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Early stage Researcher Position available - University of Antwerp Message-ID: <40ADF3B0-5BAB-42DD-A2F6-256EFBC4D4AB@tnb.ua.ac.be> Early Stage Researcher: NAMASEN is the acronym for an Initial Training Network (http://www.namasen.net), funded by the European Commission under the FP7 Marie-Curie PEOPLE programme. Its ultimate mission is to lay the foundation of a virtual scientific institute for the multi-disciplinary study of Neuroengineering and Network-Neurosciences that will train a new generation of scientists and professionals and that will contribute to Europe?s leading role in scientific innovation. NAMASEN targets both technological and scientific priorities, such as the development of novel multi-electrode arrays and advanced interfaces that functionally interact with neurons and networks. NAMASEN investigates neuro-electronic hybrids as devices able to undergo a functional and anatomical reconfiguration, on the basis of the activity-dependent plasticity and rewiring properties of neurons, under some control by the experimenter. Description Within the NAMASEN ITN Network, a 2-years position is available at the Laboratory of Theoretical Neurobiology and Neuroengineering of the University of Antwerp (Belgium), at the level of Early Stage Researchers (prospective PhD researchers). As a part of the training experience, the researcher will be based in Antwerp but will spend exchanges abroad, during secondment periods within the european ITN network. This position largely focuses on conducting mathematical modeling as well as experimental electrophysological studies on in vitro neuronal networks, growing and developing ex vivo on substrate arrays of microelectrodes (MEAs), investigating their spontaneous collective activity, their excitability dynamics over long-time scales, and their active reconfiguration by optogenetic tools. The NAMASEN ITN Network offers a unique research environment where leading academics will integrate accepted applicants into their research teams, providing a top-notch structured training programme in Neuroelectronics, Neuroengineering, and Nanotechnologies. More information on the NAMASEN ITN Network and this job opening can be found at: http://www.namasen.net Nr of positions available : 1 Research Fields: Neurosciences - Neurophysiology Career Stage: Early stage researcher or 0-4 yrs (Post graduate) Research Profile: First Stage Researcher (R1) Benefits: The Researchers will be appointed on a full-time temporary contacts, for a period of up to two years (ESRs) including a possible secondments at a different NAMASEN partner. The Researcher will be a Marie Curie fellow and will profit from all Marie Curie benefits, including living, mobility, travel, and career exploratory allowances according to the Marie Curie Framework 7 requirements (http://ec.europa.eu/mariecurieactions). Application procedure: Applications MUST include an extended CV, a motivation letter, and names and addresses of three references. Material should be addressed electronically to Prof. Michele Giugliano, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Antwerpen, Born-Bunge Foundation, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium, michele_AT_tnb.ua.ac.b, until November 15th, 2012 (mass-emails will be trashed). For informal inquiries please contact Michele Giugliano or visit the website http://www.tnb.ua.ac.be. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120803/edf41f4f/attachment.html From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Mon Aug 6 08:25:22 2012 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark A. Gluck) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 08:25:22 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellowship: Cognition and Emotion in Parkinson's Disease. Message-ID: Postdoctoral position available to start anytime in 2013: Cognition and Emotion in Parkinson's Disease We seek a postdoctoral fellow to work in our lab on studies of learning, memory, and decision making in Parkinson's Disease patients, studying how these cognitive capabilities interact with emotional and other psychiatric aspects of the disorder (e.g., depression and impulse control disorders). We are especially interested in how these cognitive and emotional variables are affected by dopaminergic medications. The position would be at Rutgers University-Newark (just outside New York City, NY) and involve overseeing our many collaborative projects in Parkinson's disease, both locally at NYU Medical Center and the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute's Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease as well as our international collaborations with Parkinson's clinics in China, Turkey, Italy, Israel, and the Palestinian West Bank. PREFERRED ATTRIBUTES: (1) A strong command of the relevant cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology literature on Parkinson's disease, basal ganglia function, and dopamine, and (2) prior experience designing and conducting behavioral studies with patient populations, (3) strong statistical data analysis skills, (4) excellent speaking and professional writing skills in English. Although not essential, it would be useful if the candidate has some familiarity with functional brain imaging to assist in ongoing imaging studies of stratal function in both healthy individuals and those with Parkinson's disease. For more information on our laboratory, see http://www.gluck.edu. A collection of our recent papers on Parkinson's disease can be found at: http://www.gluck.edu/parkinsons.html Interested candidates should contact me by email at gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu with a cover letter describing their background, career goals, and how they fit the four attributes listed above, along with a CV and a PDF of a representative published paper. Regards, Mark Gluck ___________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Web: http://www.gluck.edu Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Ph: (973) 353-3298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120806/99fd8275/attachment.html From grlmc at urv.cat Sat Aug 4 10:46:24 2012 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2012 16:46:24 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: TPNC 2012: 2nd call for posters Message-ID: The 1st International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Natural Computing (TPNC 2012) invites authors to submit poster presentations. TPNC 2012 will be held in Tarragona (Spain) on 2-4 October, 2012. See http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2012/ Poster presentations are intended to enhance informal interactions with the conference participants, at the same time permitting in-depth discussion. TOPICS We encourage authors to submit presentations that discuss novel work in progress on: - nature-inspired models of computation, - synthesis of nature by means of computation, - nature-inspired materials, - information processing in nature, - applications of natural computing. Posters do not need to present final research results. Work that is being developed and may lead to new interesting ideas is welcome. KEY DATES Submission deadline: August 26, 2012 Notification of poster acceptance or rejection: September 2, 2012 SUBMISSION Please submit an abstract through: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpnc2012 The abstract should contain the title, author(s) and detailed affiliation, and should not exceed 500 words. PRESENTATION Posters will be allocated 10 minutes each in the programme for oral presentation. Moreover, they will remain hanging during the whole conference for discussion. PUBLICATION Posters will not be published in the LNCS proceedings volume of TPNC 2012. However, there will be a specific section in the LNCS proceedings volume of TPNC 2013 reserved for those accepted papers that derive from 2012 posters. REGISTRATION Authors of accepted posters have to register to the conference. Their registration fare, however, will be very reduced: 135 Euro (one third of the early fare for PhD students). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120804/418fa2aa/attachment.html From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Wed Aug 1 15:34:00 2012 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:34:00 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volumes 91-96 Message-ID: <501984A8.6040300@science.ru.nl> Neurocomputing volume 91 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00110 ---------------- REGULAR PAPERS Decentralized kinematic control of a class of collaborative redundant manipulators via recurrent neural networks Shuai Li, Sanfeng Chen, Bo Liu, Yangming Li, Yongsheng Liang Discriminative information preservation for face recognition Dapeng Tao, Lianwen Jin Dynamical stability analysis of multiple equilibrium points in time-varying delayed recurrent neural networks with discontinuous activation functions Yujiao Huang, Huaguang Zhang, Zhanshan Wang Model-based robust fault detection and isolation of an industrial gas turbine prototype using soft computing techniques Hasan Abbasi Nozari, Mahdi Aliyari Shoorehdeli, Silvio Simani, Hamed Dehghan Banadaki Adaptive dynamic programming-based optimal control of unknown nonaffine nonlinear discrete-time systems with proof of convergence Xin Zhang, Huaguang Zhang, Qiuye Sun, Yanhong Luo A novel approach for optimization of correlated multiple responses based on desirability function and fuzzy logics Ali Salmasnia, Reza Baradaran kazemzadeh, Mohammad Mohajer Tabrizi Global exponential stability of impulsive fuzzy Cohen?Grossberg neural networks with mixed delays and reaction?diffusion terms Chenhui Zhou, Hongyu Zhang, Hongbin Zhang, Chuangyin Dang Frontal face synthesizing according to multiple non-frontal inputs and its application in face recognition Yuelong Li, Jufu Feng ------------- BRIEF PAPER Flow-based grey single-layer perceptron with fuzzy integral Yi-Chung Hu, Jen-Hung Wang, Chia-Ying Chang ------------- Neurocomputing volume 92 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00122 ------------- SPECIAL ISSUE (Data mining applications and case study) Data mining applications and case study (editorial) Xingquan Zhu Suicide attempters classification: Toward predictive models of suicidal behavior David Delgado-Gomez, Hilario Blasco-Fontecilla, Federico Sukno, Maria Socorro Ramos-Plasencia, Enrique Baca-Garcia Computational analysis of muscular dystrophy sub-types using a novel integrative scheme Chen Wang, Sook Ha, Jianhua Xuan, Yue Wang, Eric Hoffman Local analgesia adverse effects prediction using multi-label classification Guangzhi Qu, Hui Wu, Craig T. Hartrick, Jianwei Niu Multi-step prediction of pulmonary infection with the use of evolutionary fuzzy cognitive maps Elpiniki I. Papageorgiou, Wojciech Froelich Biomarker discovery using 1-norm regularization for multiclass earthworm microarray gene expression data Xiaofei Nan, Nan Wang, Ping Gong, Chaoyang Zhang, Yixin Chen, Dawn Wilkins Detecting potential collusive cliques in futures markets based on trading behaviors from real data Junjie Wang, Shuigeng Zhou, Jihong Guan A study of smoothing algorithms for item categorization on e-commerce sites Dan Shen, Jean-David Ruvini, Rajyashree Mukherjee, Neel Sundaresan Easy-to-explain feature synthesis approach for recommending entertainment video Tsung-Ju Lee, Shian-Shyong Tseng Exceptional Object Analysis for Finding Rare Environmental Events from water quality datasets Jing He, Yanchun Zhang, Guangyan Huang Adaptive Selective Learning for automatic identification of sub-kilometer craters Siyi Liu, Wei Ding, Feng Gao, Tomasz F. Stepinski Spam filtering using semantic similarity approach and adaptive BPNN Cheng Hua Li, Jimmy Xiangji Huang Approaching Sentiment Analysis by using semi-supervised learning of multi-dimensional classifiers Jonathan Ortigosa-Hern?ndez, Juan Diego Rodr?guez, Leandro Alzate, Manuel Lucania, I?aki Inza, Jose A. Lozano Capturing correlations of multiple labels: A generative probabilistic model for multi-label learning Haiping Ma, Enhong Chen, Linli Xu, Hui Xiong Software measurement data reduction using ensemble techniques Huanjing Wang, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Amri Napolitano Clustering in applications with multiple data sources ? A mutual subspace clustering approach Ming Hua, Jian Pei Learning from concept drifting data streams with unlabeled data Xindong Wu, Peipei Li, Xuegang Hu Sharing and integration of cognitive neuroscience data: Metric and pattern matching across heterogeneous ERP datasets Haishan Liu, Gwen Frishkoff, Robert Frank, Dejing Dou A framework for application-driven classification of data streams Peng Zhang, Byron J. Gao, Ping Liu, Yong Shi, Li Guo ------------- Neurocomputing volume 93 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00134 ------------- REGULAR PAPERS ------------- Existence of exponential periodic attractor of BAM neural networks with time-varying delays and impulses Yuanfu Shao Combining speech attribute detection and penalized logistic regression for phoneme recognition Sabato Marco Siniscalchi New delay-dependent stability criteria for uncertain genetic regulatory networks with time-varying delays Wenqin Wang, Shouming Zhong, Feng Liu Thalamic cooperation between the cerebellum and basal ganglia with a new tropism-based action-dependent heuristic dynamic programming method Xiaogang Ruan, Jing Chen, Naigong Yu On the performance of regularized regression learning in Hilbert space Di-Rong Chen, Han Li Adaptive fuzzy tracking control for a class of MIMO nonaffine uncertain systems A. Boulkroune, M. M'Saad, M. Farza Adaptive fuzzy output feedback control of MIMO nonlinear uncertain systems with time-varying delays and unknown backlash-like hysteresis Yongming Li, Shaocheng Tong, Tieshan Li Reversible watermarking using optional prediction error histogram modification Bo Ou, Yao Zhao, Rongrong Ni A facial sparse descriptor for single image based face recognition Na Liu, Jian-Huang Lai, Wei-Shi Zheng Signal reconstruction, modeling and simulation of a vehicle full-scale crash test based on Morlet wavelets Hamid Reza Karimi, Witold Pawlus, Kjell G. Robbersmyr Semi-supervised distance metric learning based on local linear regression for data clustering Hong Zhang, Jun Yu, Meng Wang, Yun Liu Image multi-thresholding by combining the lattice Boltzmann model and a localized level set algorithm Souleymane Balla-Arab?, Xinbo Gao Graph embedding based feature selection Dan Wei, Shutao Li, Mingkui Tan ------------- BRIEF PAPERS Learning spatiotemporal features by using independent component analysis with application to facial expression recognition Fei Long, Tingfan Wu, Javier R. Movellan, Marian S. Bartlett, Gwen Littlewort A new adaptive momentum algorithm for split-complex recurrent neural networks Dongpo Xu, Hongmei Shao, Huisheng Zhang ------------- Neurocomputing volume 94 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00146 ------------- REGULAR PAPERS Cascade BPN based transmission line overload prediction and preventive action by generation rescheduling Sujatha Balaraman, N. Kamaraj Chaos and hyperchaos in fractional-order cellular neural networks Xia Huang, Zhao Zhao, Zhen Wang, Yuxia Li Identification of nonlinear MIMO block-oriented systems with moving average noises using gradient based and least squares based iterative algorithms Maryam Salimifard, Masoumeh Jafari, Maryam Dehghani Optimization of tuning parameters for open node fault regularizer Chi-Sing Leung, Pui-Fai Sum, Yuxin Liu Stability analysis for a class of neutral-type neural networks with Markovian jumping parameters and mode-dependent mixed delays Yurong Liu, Zidong Wang, Xiaohui Liu Margin optimization based pruning for random forest Fan Yang, Wei-hang Lu, Lin-kai Luo, Tao Li Global attracting set for non-autonomous neutral type neural networks with distributed delays Lingying Teng, Daoyi Xu Face recognition using various scales of discriminant color space transform Billy Y.L. Li, Wanquan Liu, Senjian An, Aneesh Krishna, Tianwei Xu The contribution of context information: A case study of object recognition in an intelligent car Alexander Gepperth, Benjamin Dittes, Micha?l Garcia Ortiz Protein secondary structure prediction using DWKF based on SVR-NSGAII Mohammad Hossein Zangooei, Saeed Jalili Robust stability for uncertain stochastic neural network with delay and impulses Lijun Pan, Jinde Cao Application of fuzzy inference systems to detection of faults in wireless sensor networks Safdar Abbas Khan, Boubaker Daachi, Karim Djouani Self-learning complex neuro-fuzzy system with complex fuzzy sets and its application to adaptive image noise canceling Chunshien Li, Tsunghan Wu, Feng-Tse Chan Video super-resolution with 3D adaptive normalized convolution Kaibing Zhang, Guangwu Mu, Yuan Yuan, Xinbo Gao, Dacheng Tao ------------ BRIEF PAPERS Alleviating the problem of local minima in Backpropagation through competitive learning Qun Dai, Ningzhong Liu Random optimized geometric ensembles Yujian Li, Dongxia Meng, Zhiming Gui ------------ Neurocomputing volume 95 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00158 ------------ SPECIAL ISSUE (Learning from social media) Learning from social media network (editorial) Richang Hong, Ling Shao Constructing visual tag dictionary by mining community-contributed media corpus Meng Wang, Kuiyuan Yang Exploring multi-modality structure for cross domain adaptation in video concept annotation Shaoxi Xu, Sheng Tang, Yongdong Zhang, Jintao Li, Yan-Tao Zheng Collaborative visual modeling for automatic image annotation via sparse model coding Mei Wang, Feng Li, Meng Wang A comprehensive representation scheme for video semantic ontology and its applications in semantic concept detection Zheng-Jun Zha, Tao Mei, Yan-Tao Zheng, Zengfu Wang, Xian-Sheng Hua Optimizing social image search with multiple criteria: Relevance, diversity, and typicality Fuming Sun, Meng Wang, Dongxia Wang, Xueming Wang Query difficulty estimation for image retrieval Yangxi Li, Bo Geng, Linjun Yang, Chao Xu, Wei Bian Active learning for social image retrieval using Locally Regressive Optimal Design Yinfu Feng, Jun Xiao, Zhengjun Zha, Hong Zhang, Yi Yang Somebody helps me: Travel video scene detection using web-based context Wei-Ta Chu, Cheng-Jung Li Looking into the world on Google Maps with view direction estimated photos Haojie Li, Jinhui Tang, Yi Wang, Bin Liu A probabilistic graphical model for topic and preference discovery on social media Lu Liu, Feida Zhu, Lei Zhang, Shiqiang Yang Relationship strength estimation for online social networks with the study on Facebook Xiaojian Zhao, Jin Yuan, Guangda Li, Xiaoming Chen, Zhoujun Li RankCompete: Simultaneous ranking and clustering of information networks Liangliang Cao, Xin Jin, Zhijun Yin, Andrey Del Pozo, Jiebo Luo, Jiawei Han, Thomas S. Huang Nearest-neighbor method using multiple neighborhood similarities for social media data mining Shuhui Wang, Qingming Huang, Shuqiang Jiang, Qi Tian, Lei Qin Learning by expansion: Exploiting social media for image classification with few training examples Sheng-Yuan Wang, Wei-Shing Liao, Liang-Chi Hsieh, Yan-Ying Chen, Winston H. Hsu ------------ Neurocomputing volume 96 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X0016X ------------ SPECIAL ISSUE (Adaptive and natural computing algorithms) Adaptive and natural computing algorithms (editorial) V?ra K?rkov? Support vector regression based on data shifting Marcin Orchel A method of multivariable Hermite basis function approximation Bartlomiej Beliczynski The NetCover algorithm for the reconstruction of causal networks Nick Fyson, Tijl De Bie, Nello Cristianini Modeling binding and cross-modal learning in Markov logic networks Alen Vre?ko, Ale? Leonardis, Danijel Sko?aj Quality of classification explanations with PRBF Marko Robnik-?ikonja, Igor Kononenko, Erik ?trumbelj Generation of a clustering ensemble based on a gravitational self-organising map Nejc Ilc, Andrej Dobnikar Applicability of approximate multipliers in hardware neural networks Uro? Lotri?, Patricio Buli? Home electrical signal disaggregation for non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) systems Marisa Figueiredo, Ana de Almeida, Bernardete Ribeiro Quantile based decision making rule of the neural networks committee for ill-posed approximation problems Igor Kruglov, Olga Mishulina, Murat Bakirov From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Fri Aug 3 05:00:17 2012 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2012 12:00:17 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: Final Call for Papers: Cognitive Computation Journal: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor Message-ID: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Final Call for Papers: Cognitive Computation - Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor ////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// * DESCRIPTION The scope of the special issue is to celebrate the work of the late Professor John G Taylor. Professor Taylor began his career in 1956 as a theoretical physicist and has contributed many seminal papers and books to high energy physics, black holes, quantum gravity and string theory. He held positions in leading Universities in the UK, USA and Europe in physics and mathematics. He created the Centre for Neural Networks at King?s College, London, in 1990, and is still its Director. He was appointed Emeritus Professor of Mathematics of London University in 1996. He was Guest Scientist at the Research Centre in Juelich, Germany, 1996-8, working on brain imaging and data analysis. He has acted as consultant in Neural Networks to several companies. He is the Director of Research on Global Bond products and Tactical Asset Allocation for a financial investment company involved in time series prediction. He is presently European Editor-in-Chief of the journal *Neural Networks *and was President of the International Neural Network Society (1995) and the European Neural Network Society (1993/4). Since 2009, he is founding Chair of the Advisory Editorial Board for the journal *Cognitive Computation*. Prof. Taylor worked in the field of Neural Networks since 1969. He has contributed ever since to all aspects of neural networks and cognitive computation including their applications to finance and robotics. Specifically, research topics Prof. Taylor contributed to include but are not limited to: -- Noisy nets, synapses and the pRAM chip -- Dynamics of learning processes -- Mathematical analysis of neural networks and their hardware implementations -- Neural network models of perception, attention, learning and memory, decision making, motor control, cognitive control, observational learning, emotions, thinking, reasoning, conceptualization, knowledge representation, language and consciousness -- Neural network applications to finance, robotics and brain imaging The issue will consider original research articles, review articles, letters and commentaries from former and current students, junior and senior colleagues of Professor Taylor. All submitted articles should clearly state in what way their work is based on Prof. Taylor?s previous research and how it extends it. * EDITORS The reviewing process will be supervised by guest Editors (VassilisCutsuridis and Amir Hussain), together with theeditorial Board of the Cognitive Computation journal. * DEADLINES Deadlines are as follows: -- Submission deadline: September 1, 2012 -- Review deadline: December 1, 2012 -- Author notification: December 2, 2012 -- Author?s response: February 1, 2013 -- Publication by journal: ~April, 2013 Electronic submissions for the Cognitive Computation journal can be found under http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559 Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Celebrating the work of the late Prof. John G Taylor". Kind regards, Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120803/98c5cf5f/attachment.html From mozer at colorado.edu Tue Aug 7 12:25:59 2012 From: mozer at colorado.edu (Michael Mozer) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 09:25:59 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Assistant Professor Tenure Track Position, University of Colorado at Boulder Message-ID: *Computational Approaches to Cognition, tenure track position* The Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado invites applications for a full-time tenure-track position in computational approaches to cognitive and/or affective processes at the assistant professor level with a starting date of Fall 2013. The Institute is a multidisciplinary unit with representation from the departments of Psychology & Neuroscience, Computer Science, Education, Philosophy, Linguistics, Architecture & Planning, and Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences. We seek applicants with a strong research program in theoretical and technical aspects of computational science. preferably with prior experience or interest in integrating cognitive science with state-of-the-art computational approaches. For example, individuals who utilize machine learning and statistical techniques to understand cognitive processes, such as language or learning, or to analyze high dimensional data from methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, will be competitive for the position. Successful applicants could come from one of several fields, including cognitive science/cognitive neuroscience, computer science, statistics, biostatistics, physics, or other related disciplines. An ability for and commitment to interdisciplinary research is a priority, as is an approach that both exploits existing computational techniques to address questions relevant to cognitive science and advances machine-learning theory. Duties include research, research supervision, service, as well as graduate and undergraduate teaching. Applicants are directed to the CU online job application website: www.jobsatcu.com; Job Posting Number 818695. At this site you will be asked for a curriculum vitae, copies of representative publications, a teaching statement, a research summary, and letter from three referees. For fullest consideration, please apply by September 24th, 2012. Applications will continue to be accepted after this date until the position is filled. Email inquiries may be sent to Donna.Caccamise at colorado.edu. The University of Colorado is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building a diverse workforce. We encourage applications from women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans. Alternative formats of this ad can be provided upon request for individuals with disabilities by contacting the ADA Coordinator at hr-ada at colorado.edu. The University of Colorado Boulder conducts background checks on all final applicants being considered for employment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120807/348bd74f/attachment.html From metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de Tue Aug 7 10:31:15 2012 From: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de (Christoph Metzner) Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2012 16:31:15 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Multi-scale Modeling in Computational Neuroscience: 2nd Call for Registration Message-ID: *Multi-scale** **Modeling** **in** **Computational** **Neuroscience* To be held *September **3** **-** 8*, 2012, University of L?beck, L?beck Germany As the field of computational neuroscience continues to mature, it is clear that understanding the nervous system from a computational point of view will require modeling at multiple levels of scale from sub-cellular to systems and behavior. This hands-on workshop will consider both issues and techniques involved in modeling nervous systems at single levels of scale such as intracellular, single neuron and network models, as well as the opportunities for scientific discovery when models at these scales are linked. With a strong emphasis on hands on experience, the workshop will also include lectures focused on multi-scale modeling. The workshop is designed for advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or faculty interesting in the practical application and development of multi-scale modeling techniques as well as software developers interested in development and integration of computational neuroscience tools. Through simulation projects, participants will have the opportunity to create realistic neural models from sub-cellular to network levels. This will provide an excellent opportunity for those with previous experience in neural simulation to learn new techniques and strategies for multi-scale modeling. Although participants can use the simulator of their choosing, this workshop will also introduce GENESIS 3 (G-3), a modular reimplementation of the GENESIS neural simulator that has capabilities uniquely suited for multi-scale modeling. The international faculty includes: *Dr.** **James** **M.** **Bower* (University of Texas System) who has been involved in the development of software tools for multi-scale modeling for 30 years. *Dr.** **David** **Beeman** *(University of Colorado) who has supported multi-scale modeling both as an instructor in numerous international courses in computational biology as well as in his role as director of the GENESIS users group. *Dr.** **Avrama** **Blackwell* (George Mason University) whose modeling and experimental expertise involves the investigation of molecular synaptic mechanisms. *Dr.** **Hugo** **Cornelis* (Lead GENESIS developer) with expertise both in the design and construction of multi-scale simulation systems as well as modeling at single cell and network levels. *Dr.** **Volker** **Steuber* (University of Hertfordshire) with expertise in biochemical, single cell, network and systems level modeling and analysis. *Mr.** **Armando** **Rodriguez** *(University of Texas San Antonio) an expert in interface design and interoperability in simulations systems. *Application** **deadline** **is** **August** **15th.** * Applications and inquiries should be sent to: * gen3 at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de * Please see the website at: *https://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/index.php?id=366* for the latest detailed information. The workshop is limited to 20 total participants and therefore, those interested should register as soon as possible. In addition to the scientific activities, several social activities have also been planned. Given the relatively short time before the workshop, we would greatly appreciate it if you would pass this announcement on to other colleagues and students who may find it of interest. -- ========================================================================================================= Institute for Robotics and Cognitive Systems -- University of Luebeck Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences -- University of Luebeck -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Math. Christoph Metzner tel: +49 451 317 931 12 University of Luebeck secretary: +49 451 500 5201 Institute for Robotics fax: +49 451 500 5202 Ratzeburger Allee 160 mail: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de D-23538 Luebeck, Germany www: http://www.rob.uni-luebeck.de // http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/ ========================================================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120807/744ed591/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: final_poster_web.png Type: image/png Size: 1499354 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120807/744ed591/final_poster_web-0001.png From byronyu at cmu.edu Thu Aug 9 00:14:57 2012 From: byronyu at cmu.edu (Byron Yu) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 00:14:57 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc opening in computational neuroscience Message-ID: The Neural Signal Processing group at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) is seeking a postdoctoral research fellow to develop novel statistical algorithms to study the activity of large neural populations. Our work ranges from sensory coding to motor control and brain-computer interfaces. We have a number of close experimental collaborators in these areas. The particular system of study can be adapted to the applicant's background and interests. Applicants should have a strong background in machine learning, signal processing, statistics, or a related field. Ideally, the applicant would also have prior experience in neuroscience. The postdoc would benefit from CMU's strengths in engineering and machine learning, as well as the thriving and extensive neuroscience community in Pittsburgh. If interested, please contact Prof. Byron Yu (byronyu at cmu.edu) with your CV and description of your interests. More information about the group can be found at: http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~byronyu/ -- Byron Yu Assistant Professor Electrical & Computer Engineering / Biomedical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~byronyu From kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Wed Aug 8 06:07:26 2012 From: kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Janina Kirsch) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2012 12:07:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Junior Research Group Leaders within the new Cluster of Excellence "BrainLinks - BrainTools" Message-ID: <00ad01cd754d$9cc39f50$d64addf0$@uni-freiburg.de> The University of Freiburg invites applications for positions as %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% %% %% Junior Research Group Leaders %% %% within the new %% %% Cluster of Excellence ?BrainLinks-BrainTools? %% %% %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% BrainLinks-BrainTools, an interdisciplinary research initiative in the field of neurotechnology, unites research in the neurosciences, engineering, and clinical applications in Freiburg, thus anchoring neurotechnology as a research axis between three faculties of the University and their cooperation partners. BrainLinks-BrainTools offers young scientists a creative and inspiring working environment in the interdisciplinary research area where neurotechnology forms the intersection of neuroscience, microsystems engineering, computer science, robotics, and clinical applications. BrainLinks-BrainTools will offer advanced training in specific areas to actively consolidate the new group, including courses in team management, support on obtaining further funding, mentoring from senior scientists, and intensive interaction with other Junior Research Group Leaders. The junior groups will be funded for up to 5 years. Funding for each group includes the position of the group leader, 2 PhD students, a start-up package as well as staff support. It is expected that the Junior Research Group Leaders will be raising financial means from third party funds during these 5 years to enlarge their respective groups. Candidates should be highly qualified junior scientists, holding a PhD or MD with equivalent qualification, and should have an excellent scientific track record plus at least 2 years of postdoctoral experience in the research areas mentioned above. While there is no particular restriction on the specific research area, we expect that the successful candidates will establish synergistic collaborations with groups working in the cluster and that they will actively contribute to the aims of the cluster. The positions will be integrated in the Faculty of Biology, Engineering, or Medicine, depending on the chosen research program. The University is seeking to increase the amount of female employees and one of the goals of BrainLinks-BrainTools is to promote women in higher positions. Thus, we strongly encourage applications from qualied female candidates. Applications should include a full CV, a list of publications and the contact details of 3 referees. Additionally, we expect a brief outline of the intended research project (max. 3 pages), indicating the main research area and impact on BrainLinks-BrainTools? main goals as part of the application. The outline should also refer to possibilities for collaborations within the Cluster of Excellence. All relevant information about BrainLinks-BrainTools are available on its homepage: http://www.brainlinks-braintools.de/researchprogram/ The applications should be sent by electronic mail (maximum of 3 documents and 10 MB size in total) to positions at brainlinks-braintools.uni-freiburg.de, where further inquiries can also be directed to. Short-listed candidates will be invited to submit a full research proposal that will be reviewed by an evaluation board consisting of members of BrainLinks- BrainTools and external experts. Wolfram Burgard BrainLinks-BrainTools Institute for Computer Science University of Freiburg Georges-Koehler-Allee 079 79110 Freiburg Germany From michael.vendetti at ucla.edu Mon Aug 13 17:23:22 2012 From: michael.vendetti at ucla.edu (Michael Vendetti) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:23:22 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Research Position for Modeling of Analogical Reasoning Message-ID: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoctoral Positions Keith Holyoak and Barbara Knowlton at UCLA, in collaboration with John Hummel at the University of Illinois, are seeking 1 or possibly 2 post-doctoral fellows to help advance a joint research project. The project involves development of a neural-network model of analogical reasoning and learning closely tied to functions of prefrontal cortex and related circuitry. This training opportunity involves a variety of methods, close collaboration with the PIs, and is geared toward producing high impact theoretical contributions. The ideal candidates would have backgrounds in cognitive neuroscience and/or computational modeling of neural systems, including neural algorithms for Bayesian inference. One position will place greater emphasis on knowledge of neuroscience and higher cognition, the other on computational skills (including languages such as Python and Matlab). For the latter position, individuals from applied math, math, computer science, and related backgrounds with cognitive neuroscience interests will receive serious consideration. The project is funded by a multi-site contract involving computer scientists and cognitive neuroscientists at multiple institutions. Interaction with this highly collaborative community will provide unique opportunities for education and training to those interested in using computational methods to advance development of neurally-realistic models of human cognition. Salary and benefits will conform to NIH postdoctoral rates. The position is for one year with the possibility of extension for a second year. The desired start date is as soon as possible, but there is flexibility. To apply, please email a statement of research interests, CV, sample publications, and a list of references to holyoak at lifesci.ucla.edu. Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. Appointments are subject to a final determination of the availability of funds. UCLA is an Equal-Opportunity/Affirmative-Action Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120813/c82f7cf6/attachment.html From jutta.kretzberg at uni-oldenburg.de Mon Aug 13 16:34:13 2012 From: jutta.kretzberg at uni-oldenburg.de (Jutta Kretzberg) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 22:34:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Six assistant professor positions at cluster of excellence "Hearing4all", Oldenburg, Germany Message-ID: <502964C5.5090502@uni-oldenburg.de> The Faculties of Mathematics and Sciences and of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Oldenburg are seeking to fill as soon as possible the following positions within the cluster of excellence "Hearing4all" (_www.hearing4all.de_) A)Assistant professorship (W1) "Neurobiology of Hearing" (TG 1) with the research areas auditory neurophysiology and animal psychoacoustics B) Assistant professorship (W1)"Analysis and Modelling of the Auditory System" (TG 1&3) with the research areas psychoacoustics, functional imaging of the auditory system and auditory modeling C)Assistant professorship (W1)"Psychophysiology of Hearing" (TG 2&7) with the research areas objective auditory diagnostics and auditory signal processing D)Assistant professorship (W1) "Rehabilitative Audio Signal Processing" (TG 4) with the research areas audio signal processing, acoustics, audiology, psychoacoustics, hearing aid technology E) Assistant professorship (W1)"Assistive Audio Technology" (TG 6) with the research areas machine listening, audio & speech signal processing, man-machine interaction, evaluation of audio technology F)Assistant professorship (W1)"Methods in Neurocognitive Psychology" (TG 7) with the research areas brain-computer interfaces, neurocognition, cognitive psychophysiology, The successful candidates are expected to actively contribute to the cluster of excellence "Hearing4all" and to the further structured research programmes within the Centre of Excellence for Hearing Research, i.e., the collaborative research centre "The Active Auditory System" (SFB/TRR31), the Research Unit "Individualized Hearing Acoustics", the national centre of competence for hearing technology (H?rTech) and the PhD Program "Function and Pathophysiology of the Auditory System". They are also expected to contribute to the core teaching program of the respective contributing disciplines (Medical Physics and Acoustics, Psychology, Neuroscience). A successful candidate is expected to have an academic university degree, possess pedagogic skills, be able to independently perform excellent scientific work usually demonstrated by international publications, and should be experienced in at least one of the respective research areas listed above. She/he should be qualified for heading a junior research group and assuming an important research function within the task groups (TG) of the cluster of excellence (c.f., www.hearing4all.de). Please indicate in your application for which position(s) you apply. Additional conditions for employment according to law (NHG ?30) apply. The position is available from 1 November 2012, for initially 3 years, with prospect for continuation for 3 more years after successful evaluation. At the end of the total 6-year period a competitive tenure-track option for a W2 Professorship within the framework of the German regulations is provided. The tenure decision is based on an external evaluation and tenure can be given to 50% of the junior research group leaders. The University of Oldenburg strives to increase the proportion of women in science, so we especially encourage female candidates to apply. Handicapped applicants will be given preference if equally qualified. Please send your application at the latest by August 31st, 2012 to Prof. Dr. Dr. Birger Kollmeier, Carl von Ossietzky Universit?t Oldenburg, Fakult?t V, Exzellenzcluster "Hearing4all", 26111 Oldenburg (e-mail: Karin.Klink at uni-oldenburg.de). The application should include a CV, a list of publications, and copies of certificates for academic grades. It is planned to interview candidates in the beginning of October. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120813/8492af9d/attachment-0001.html From jpezaris at gmail.com Sun Aug 12 06:54:43 2012 From: jpezaris at gmail.com (John Pezaris) Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 06:54:43 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position in Visual Prosthetics Message-ID: The Pezaris Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School has an opening for a post-doctoral researcher to work on our thalamic visual prosthesis project. This is an exciting project with impact in the basic sciences along with tangible benefit to patients. More information on the project is available at http://sight2blind.org. The ideal candidate has a strong quantitative neuroscience background, electrophysiology experience in the behaving primate preparation, proficiency in MATLAB, and familiarity with the early visual system. Applicants should forward a CV, cover letter, and PDFs of articles or pre-prints to pezaris.john at mgh.harvard.edu. From nystrom at Princeton.EDU Tue Aug 14 18:01:55 2012 From: nystrom at Princeton.EDU (Leigh Nystrom) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:01:55 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position, Princeton Neuroscience Institute Message-ID: POSTDOCTORAL POSITION, PRINCETON NEUROSCIENCE INSTITUTE Several postdoctoral positions are currently available in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University. These positions are part of a multi-year research project using fMRI and EEG to study the mechanisms of cognitive control in humans performing high level cognitive tasks. The project is being led by a team of Princeton faculty, including Jonathan Cohen, Matthew Botvinick, Yael Niv, and Kenneth Norman. Specific topics of interest include self-control over impulsive behavior, hierarchical reinforcement learning of goals and subgoals, prospective memory and planning, decision making under uncertainty and ambiguity, and the explore/exploit tradeoff. The work will draw heavily on formal theoretical modeling, including optimality analysis and neural network simulation, as well as empirical studies. In addition, new brain imaging methods will be developed to measure internal control representations, employing model-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), whole-brain correlational data, and real-time fMRI feedback using online MVPA. REQUIREMENTS: Ph.D. in psychology, neuroscience, or closely related field; a strong background in one or more of the following is preferred: fMRI, EEG, computational/mathematical modeling of psychological and/or neural function. Candidates must be able to pass a standard MR safety screening in order to work in the MR environment. To apply, please visit the website https://jobs.princeton.edu (requisition #1200495) to create an online application. Applications should include a cover letter, a CV, and letters of reference. Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable EEO and affirmative action regulations. For general application information and how to self-identify, see http://www.princeton.edu/dof/policies/forms/newappoint_reclassif/PSoftSelfID.pdf From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue Aug 14 23:23:35 2012 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 04:23:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI'2013), Singapore, April 2013: Call for Contributions Message-ID: Please forward to colleagues/contacts who may be interested in attending this IEEE CIS flagship event. CALL For Contributions ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2013 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, IEEE SSCI 2013 15-19 April 2013, Singapore http://ieee-ssci.org/ IEEE SSCI 2013 is one of the two flagship biennial international events sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS) promoting all aspects of the theory and applications of computational intelligence. The IEEE SSCI co-locates several technical meetings at one location. This event attracts top researchers, professionals, and students from around the world. The IEEE SSCI 2013 (Singapore) now calls contributions from experts around the world. Please visit the IEEE SSCI 2013's web pages to learn more about the relevant topics and proposal submission procedures. IMPORTANT DATES: Special Session Proposal Submission: Before 31st Aug 2012 Special Session Decision Notification: Within 2 Weeks after Submission Tutorial \ Keynote Proposal Submission: Before 15th Jan 2013 Tutorial \ Keynote Decision Notification: 10 Feb 2013 Paper submission: 10 Oct 2012 Decision: 05 Jan 2013 Final submission: 05 Feb 2013 Early Registration: 05 Feb 2013 LIST OF SYMPOSIA & WORKSHOPS: http://ieee-ssci.org/ ADPRL 2013, IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning, Marco Wiering, The Netherlands; Jagannathan Sarangapani, USA; Huaguang Zhang, China. IEEE ALIFE 2013, IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, Terry Bossomaier, Australia; Chrystopher L. Nehaniv, UK; Hiroki Sayama, USA. CCMB 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence, Cognitive Algorithms, Mind, and Brain, Leonid Pervlovsky, USA; Damien Coyle, UK; Kai Keng Ang, Singapore; Jose F Fontanari, Brazil; Robert Kozma, USA. CIASG 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence Applications in Smart Grid, Ganesh K Venayagamoorthy, USA; Jung-Wook Park, Korea; Haibo He, USA. CIBCB 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Jung-Hsien Chiang, Taiwan; Pau-Choo (Julia) Chung, Taiwan. CIBIM 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Biometrics and Identity Management, David Zhang, Hong Kong; Qinghan Xiao, Canada; Fabio Scotti, Italy. CIC 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Creativity, Chuan-Kang Ting, Taiwan; Francisco Fern?ndez de Vega Spain; Palle Dahlstedt, Sweden; CICA 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Control and Automation, Xiao-Jun Zeng, UK. CICARE 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Healthcare and e-health, Amir Hussain, UK; Calum MacRae, Harvard Medical School, USA; Warner Slack, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. CIComms 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Communication Systems, Maode Ma, Singapore; Paolo Rocca, Italy; Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, Ireland. CICS 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security, Dipankar Dasgupta, USA; Justin Zhan, USA; Kumaraguru Ponnurangam, India. CIDM 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining, Barbara Hammer, Germany; Zhi-Hua Zhou, China; Lipo Wang, Singapore; Nitesh Chawla, USA. CIDUE 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments, Yaochu Jin, UK; S Yang, UK; Robi Polikar, USA. CIES 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Engineering Solutions, Michael Beer, UK; Vladik Kreinovich, USA; Rudolf Kruse, Germany. CIEL 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Ensemble Learning, Nikhil R Pal, India; Xin Yao, UK; P N Suganthan, Singapore. CIFEr 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering and Economics, Shu-Heng Chen, Taiwan; Robert Golan, USA; Han La Poutre, The Netherlands; Ronald R. Yager, USA. CIfIoT 2013, IEEE International Workshop on Computational Intelligence for the Internet of Things, Antonio Manzalini, Italy; Hussein Mouftah, Canada; Vincenzo Piuri, Italy. CIHLI 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Human-like Intelligence, Jacek Mandziuk, Poland; Wlodzislaw Duch, Poland. CII 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Industry, Piero Bonissone, USA; Keeley Crockett, UK; Cristian Figueroa, Chile; Emilio Corchado, University of Salamanca, Spain. CIMI 2013, IEEE International Workshop on Computational Intelligence in Medical Imaging, Gerald Schaefer, UK; Sergio Damas, Spain. CIMSVP 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Multimedia Signal and Vision Processing, K M Iftekharuddin, USA; S Bouzerdoum, Australia. CIPLS 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Production and Logistics Systems, B?lent ?atay, Turkey; Raymond Chiong, Australia; Patrick Siarry, France. CIRAT 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies, Guilherme N DeSouza,USA; Shuzhi Sam Ge, Singapore. CISched 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Scheduling, Rong Qu, UK; Ling Wang, China; Quanke Pan, Liaocheng University, China. CISDA 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Security and Defense Applications, Akira Namatame, Japan; Nur Zincir-Heywood, Canada; Rami Abielmona, Canada. CIVI 2013, IEEE Workshop on Computational Intelligence for Visual Intelligence, Guilherme N DeSouza, USA; Yuanqiang (Evan) Dong, USA. CIVTS 2013, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Vehicles and Transportation Systems, Dimitar Filev, USA; Danil Prokhorov, USA. CompSens 2013, IEEE Workshop on Merging Fields of Computational Intelligence and Sensor Technology, Ivo Bukovsky, Czech Republic; Torsten Wagner, Japan EAIS 2013, IEEE Symposium on Evolving Adapting Intelligent Systems, Plamen Angelov, UK; Dimitar Filev, USA; Nikola Kasabov, New Zealand. FOCI 2013, IEEE Symposium on Foundations of computational Intelligence, Manuel Ojeda-Aciego, Spain; Carlos Cotta, Spain. GEFS 2013, IEEE International Workshop on Genetic and Evolutionary Fuzzy Systems, Rafael Alcala, Spain; Yusuke Nojima, Japan. HIMA 2013, IEEE Workshop on Hybrid Intelligent Models and Applications, Patricia Melin, Mexico; Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, India. IA 2013, IEEE Symposium on Intelligent Agents, Hani Hagras, UK; Vincenzo Loia, Italy. ICES 2013, IEEE International Conference on Evolvable Systems - From Biology to Hardware, Andy M Tyrrell, UK; Pauline C Haddow, Norway. MC 2013, IEEE Symposium on Memetic Computing, Zexuan Zhu, China; Maoguo Gong, China; Ji Zhen, China; Yew-Soon Ong, Singapore. MCDM 2013, IEEE Symposium on Multicriteria Decision-Making , Carlos A Coello Coello, Mexico; Piero Bonissone, USA; Yaochu Jin, UK. OC 2013, IEEE Workshop on Organic Computing, Rolf W?rtz, Germany. QCCI 2013, IEEE Symposium on Quantum Computing and Computational Intelligence, William N N Hung, USA; Swagatam Das, India; Marek Perkowski, USA. RiiSS 2013, IEEE Workshop on Robotic Intelligence in Informationally Structured Space, Honghai Liu, UK; Naoyuki Kubota, Japan. SDE 2013, IEEE Symposium on Differential Evolution, Janez Brest, Slovenia; Swagatam Das, India; Ferrante Neri, Finland; P N Suganthan, Singapore. SIS 2013, IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, Yuhui Shi, P. R. China; P N Suganthan, Singapore. T2FUZZ 2013, IEEE Symposium on Advances in Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Systems, Simon Coupland, UK; Woeiwan Tan, National University of Singapore, Singapore WACI 2013, Workshop on Affective Computational Intelligence, Jean-Claude Martin, France, Marie-Jeanne Lesot, France; Maria Rifqi, France. -- The University of Stirling is ranked in the top 50 in the world in The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 table, which ranks the world's best 100 universities under 50 years old. The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Tue Aug 14 18:25:43 2012 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 00:25:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: COSYNE 2013: Call for Workshop Proposals Message-ID: <502AD067.40909@gmail.com> ================================================================= Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING WORKSHOPS Feb 28 - Mar 2, 2013 Mar 3 - 5, 2013 Salt Lake City, Utah Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah http://www.cosyne.org ================================================================= CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Preference will be given to proposals received by September 14, 2012; additional proposals received by October 26, 2012 will be considered only if space is available. The annual Cosyne meeting provides an inclusive forum for the exchange of empirical and theoretical approaches to problems in systems neuroscience. A series of workshops will be held after the main Cosyne meeting (www.cosyne.org). The goal is to provide an informal forum for the discussion of important research questions and challenges. Controversial issues, open problems, comparisons of competing approaches, and alternative viewpoints are encouraged. This year we would like to foster increased participation from experimental groups as well as computational ones. Please circulate widely and encourage your students and postdocs to apply. The overarching goal of all workshops should be the integration of empirical and theoretical approaches, in an environment that fosters collegial discussion and debate. Preference will be given to proposals that differ substantially in content, scope, and/or approach from workshops of recent years (examples available at www.cosyne.org). Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: sensory processing, motor planning and control, functional neural circuits, motivation, reward and decision making, learning and memory, adaptation and plasticity, neural coding, neural circuitry and network models, and methods in computational or systems neuroscience. Please note that in an effort to reduce the overlap between workshops, speakers are strongly discouraged from presenting talks at more than one workshop. WORKSHOP DETAILS: There will be 4-8 workshops/day, running in parallel. Each workshop is expected to draw between 15 and 80 people. The workshops will be split into morning (8:00-11:00 AM) and afternoon (4:30-7:30 PM) sessions. Workshops will be held at Snowbird, a ski resort located 30 miles (typically less than an hour) from the Salt Lake City airport. Buses from the main conference will be provided. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Deadline: September 14, 2012 Format: plain text only---please no attachments---email to: cosyne13workshops at googlegroups.com (Jessica Cardin, Tatyana Sharpee) Proposals should include: - Name(s) and email address(es) of the organizers (no more than 2 organizers per session, please). A primary contact should be designated. - A title. - A brief description of 1) what the workshop will address and accomplish, 2) why the topic is of interest, 3) who is the targeted group of participants. - Names of potential invitees, with indication of confirmed speakers. Preference will be given to workshops with the most confirmed speakers. - Proposed workshop length (1 or 2 days). Most workshops will be limited to a single day. If you think your workshop needs 2 days, please explain why. - A *brief* resume of the workshop organizer along with a *brief* list of publications (about half a page total). WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS RESPONSIBILITIES: - Coordinate workshop participation and content. - Moderate the discussion. SUGGESTIONS: Experience has shown that the best discussions during a workshop are those that arise spontaneously. A good way to foster these is to have short talks and long question periods (e.g. 30+15 minutes), and have plenty of breaks. We strongly recommend fewer than 10 talks. WORKSHOP COSTS: Detailed registration costs, etc, will be available at www.cosyne.org. Please note: Cosyne does NOT provide travel funding for workshop speakers. All workshop speakers are expected to pay for workshop registration fees. Participants are encouraged to register early, in order to qualify for discounted registration rates. One complimentary (free) organizer registration is provided per workshop. For workshops with 2 organizers, the free registration can be given to one of the organizers or split evenly between them. COSYNE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Nicole Rust (Penn) and Jonathan Pillow (UT Austin) Program Chairs: Peter Latham (UCL) and Marlene Cohen (U Pittsburgh) Workshop Chairs: Jessica Cardin (Yale) and Tatyana Sharpee (Salk) Publicity Chair: Kanaka Rajan (Princeton) COSYNE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Anthony Zador (CSHL) Alexandre Pouget (U Rochester) Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme) From metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de Thu Aug 16 10:45:16 2012 From: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de (Christoph Metzner) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:45:16 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: EXTENDED DEADLINE: Workshop on Multi-Scale Modeling in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: *Call for Registration/ Extended Deadline* *Multi-scale* *Modeling* *in* *Computational* *Neuroscience* *September 3* *-* *8*, 2012, University of L?beck, L?beck Germany Application Deadline has been extended to August 22nd! This is the final call for registration for a weeklong workshop in Luebeck Germany focused on the development and use of multi-scale realistic models in computational neuroscience. The workshop will be a hands-on exploration of neuronal models at multiple levels of scale. The workshop is particularly appropriate for anyone already working with a model who would like to connect that model to representations at other levels of scale. The workshop is also relevant to software developers interested in integrating new model analysis and visualization tools into neuronal simulators. While participants can use the simulator of their choosing, the workshop will introduce GENESIS 3 (G-3), a modular reimplementation of the GENESIS neural simulator that has capabilities uniquely suited for multi-scale modeling. The international faculty includes: *Dr.* *James* *M.* *Bower* (University of Texas System) who has been involved in the development of software tools for multi-scale modeling for 30 years. *Dr.* *David* *Beeman* (University of Colorado) who has supported multi-scale modeling both as an instructor in numerous international courses in computational biology as well as in his role as director of the GENESIS users group. *Dr.* *Avrama* *Blackwell* (George Mason University) whose modeling and experimental expertise involves the investigation of molecular synaptic mechanisms. *Dr.* *Hugo* *Cornelis* (Lead GENESIS developer) with expertise both in the design and construction of multi-scale simulation systems as well as modeling at single cell and network levels. *Dr.* *Volker* *Steuber* (University of Hertfordshire) with expertise in biochemical, single cell, network and systems level modeling and analysis. *Mr.* *Armando* *Rodriguez* (University of Texas San Antonio) an expert in interface design and interoperability in simulations systems. *Application Deadline has been extended to August 22nd! * Applications and inquiries should be sent to: gen3 at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de Please see the website at: http://gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/index.php?id=377 for the latest information. -- ========================================================================================================= Institute for Robotics and Cognitive Systems -- University of Luebeck Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences -- University of Luebeck -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Math. Christoph Metzner tel: +49 451 317 931 12 University of Luebeck secretary: +49 451 500 5201 Institute for Robotics fax: +49 451 500 5202 Ratzeburger Allee 160 mail: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de D-23538 Luebeck, Germany www: http://www.rob.uni-luebeck.de // http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/ ========================================================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120816/a089998e/attachment.html From bengio at google.com Thu Aug 16 20:57:15 2012 From: bengio at google.com (Samy Bengio) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:57:15 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: Big Data meets Computer Vision - A NIPS 2012 Workshop Message-ID: *Big Data Meets Computer Vision: First International Workshop on Large Scale Visual Recognition and Retrieval (BigVision 2012) Held in conjunction with NIPS 2012. December 7 or December 8 (TBD), 2012. Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA. https://sites.google.com/site/bigvision2012/ * *============= Overview ============= The emergence of ?big data? has brought about a paradigm shift throughout computer science. Computer vision is no exception. The explosion of images and videos on the Internet and the availability of large amounts of annotated data have created unprecedented opportunities and fundamental challenges on scaling up computer vision. Over the past few years, machine learning on big data has become a thriving field with a plethora of theories and tools developed. Meanwhile, large scale vision has also attracted increasing attention in the computer vision community. This workshop aims to bring closer researchers in large scale machine learning and large scale vision to foster cross-talk between the two fields. The goal is to encourage machine learning researchers to work on large scale vision problems, to inform computer vision researchers about new developments on large scale learning, and to identify unique challenges and opportunities. This workshop will focus on two distinct yet closely related vision problems: recognition and retrieval. Both are inherently large scale. In particular, both must handle high dimensional features (hundreds of thousands to millions), a large variety of visual classes (tens of thousands to millions), and a large number of examples (millions to billions). This workshop will consist of invited talks, panels, discussions, and paper submissions. The target audience of this workshop includes industry and academic researchers interested in machine learning, computer vision, multimedia, and related fields. **============= **Call for Papers **============= ** * *We invite high quality submissions of extended abstracts on topics including, but not limited to --State of the field: What really defines large scale vision? How does it differ from traditional vision research? What are its unique challenges for large scale learning? --Indexing algorithms and data structures: How do we efficiently find similar features/images/classes from a large collection, a key operation in both recognition and retrieval? --Semi-supervised/unsupervised learning: Large scale data comes with different levels of supervision, ranging from fully labeled and quality controlled to completely unlabeled. How do we make use of such data? --Metric learning: Retrieval visually similar images/objects requires learning a similarity metric. How do we learn a good metric from a large amount of data? --Visual models and feature representations: What is a good feature representation? How do we model and represent images/videos to handle tens of thousands of fine-grained visual classes? --Exploiting semantic structures: How do we exploit the rich semantic relations between visual categories to handle a large number of classes? --Transfer learning: How do we handle new visual classes (objects/scenes/activities) after having learned a large number of them? How do we transfer knowledge using the semantic relations between classes? --Optimization techniques: How do we perform learning with training data that do not fit into memory? How do we parallelize learning? --Datasets issues: What is a good large scale dataset? How should we construct datasets? How do we avoid dataset bias? --Systems and infrastructure: How do we design and develop libraries and tools to facilitate large scale vision research? What infrastructure do we need? --Submissions must be in NIPS 2012 format, with a maximum number of 4 pages (excluding references). The deadline of submission is 11:59pm PDT, September 16th, 2012. Submissions do not have to be anonymous. Accepted papers will be presented as oral talks or posters during the workshop. For detailed submission instructions please visit https://sites.google.com/site/bigvision2012/ =============== Important Dates =============== Submission deadline: September 16th, 2012. Decision notification: October 7th, 2012. Workshop date: December 7th or December 8th (TBD), 2012. ================ Confirmed Speakers ================ Alex Berg, Stony Brook University Shih-Fu Chang, Columbia University Andrew Ng, Stanford University Florent Perronnin, Xerox Research Centre Europe Lorenzo Torresani, Dartmouth College ============== Organizers ============== Samy Bengio, Google Jia Deng, Stanford University Fei-Fei Li, Stanford University Yuanqing Lin, NEC Labs* -- Samy Bengio | Research Scientist in Machine Learning | bengio at google.com | http://bengio.abracadoudou.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120816/3746a2ed/attachment-0001.html From grlmc at urv.cat Sat Aug 18 04:37:28 2012 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2012 10:37:28 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: TPNC 2012: final call for posters Message-ID: <86135D86BC2B46D0B43F8856B1B7ABA7@Carlos1> The 1st International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Natural Computing (TPNC 2012) invites authors to submit poster presentations. TPNC 2012 will be held in Tarragona (Spain) on 2-4 October, 2012. See http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2012/ Poster presentations are intended to enhance informal interactions with the conference participants, at the same time permitting in-depth discussion. TOPICS We encourage authors to submit presentations that discuss novel work in progress on: - nature-inspired models of computation, - synthesis of nature by means of computation, - nature-inspired materials, - information processing in nature, - applications of natural computing. Posters do not need to present final research results. Work that is being developed and may lead to new interesting ideas is welcome. KEY DATES Submission deadline: August 26, 2012 Notification of poster acceptance or rejection: September 2, 2012 SUBMISSION Please submit an abstract through: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpnc2012 The abstract should contain the title, author(s) and detailed affiliation, and should not exceed 500 words. PRESENTATION Posters will be allocated 10 minutes each in the programme for oral presentation. Moreover, they will remain hanging during the whole conference for discussion. PUBLICATION Posters will not be published in the LNCS proceedings volume of TPNC 2012. However, there will be a specific section in the LNCS proceedings volume of TPNC 2013 reserved for those accepted papers that derive from 2012 posters. REGISTRATION Authors of accepted posters have to register to the conference. Their registration fare, however, will be very reduced: 135 Euro (one third of the early fare for PhD students). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120818/2ee767c9/attachment-0001.html From dglanzma at mail.nih.gov Mon Aug 20 15:48:36 2012 From: dglanzma at mail.nih.gov (Glanzman, Dennis (NIH/NIMH) [E]) Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:48:36 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: FINAL Call for Posters - 20th Annual Dynamical Neuroscience Meeting Message-ID: <87A69598824B3D4EBF14080B3F0906BE04908D675A@NIHMLBX12.nih.gov> 20th Annual Dynamical Neuroscience Satellite Symposium Collective Cognition: The Neurophysiology of Social Neuroscience Preceding the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience Thursday and Friday, October 11-12, 2012 Harrah's Hotel, 228 Poydras Street, New Orleans, LA 70130 The study of social behavior presents unique challenges to the neuroscientist because it requires us to move beyond the study of individual brains. Traditional behavioral and systems neuroscience focuses on an individual, manipulates stimuli affecting that individual, and measures the neurobiological outcome of those manipulations at the individual level. Physiological correlates of individual behavior can be obtained in real-time, using single unit recording, EEG/ERP's, fMRI BOLD, or PET. Dynamical neuroscientists have been examining temporal sequencing and correlated activity within a single brain for decades. Social neuroscience has recently begun to investigate the complex biological bases of human social cognitive and behavioral abilities, but the majority of studies have focused on studying brains in isolation using paradigms that examine social interactions from afar. Consequently, the two-way neural correlates and physiological underpinnings of real-time social interaction have remained elusive. This symposium will provide a platform for discussion of the challenges involved in understanding interacting brains and a window into the future of social neuroscience and its potential enhancement via computational and dynamical systems modeling. Invited Speakers Silke Anders, Fabio Babiloni, Guillaume Dumas, Naotaka Fujii, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Christian Keysers, P. Read Montague, Michael A. Riley, Allan L. Reiss, Leonhard Schilbach, Linda B. Smith, Emmanuelle Tognoli and Stephanie A. White Symposium Organizers J.A. Scott Kelso, Janine M. Simmons and Dennis L. Glanzman Poster Receipt Deadline: August 31, 2011 For logistical information please contact Nakia Wilson, The Dixon Group, Inc., (202)-281-2825, nwilson at dixongroup.com For programmatic information, please contact Dennis Glanzman, NIMH/NIH, (301) 443-1576, glanzman at nih.gov There is no fee to attend this meeting. Register and submit a poster at this website: http://neuro.dgimeetings.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120820/93163e74/attachment-0001.html From terry at salk.edu Tue Aug 21 18:30:05 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:30:05 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - September, 2012 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 24, Number 9 - September 1, 2012 Letters Frequency Selectivity Emerging From Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity Matthieu Gilson, Moritz Buerck, Anthony N. Burkitt, and Leo van Hemmen Optimal Population Codes for Space: Grid Cells Outperform Place Cells Alexander Mathis, Andreas VM Herz, and Martin B Stemmler Distinguishing the Causes of Firing With the Membrane Potential Slope Chris Christodoulou, Achilleas Koutsou, Guido Bugmann , and Jacob Kanev Hebbian Learning of Recurrent Connections: A Geometrical Perspective Mathieu Galtier, Olivier Faugeras, and Paul Bressloff Characterizing Responses of Translation-Invariant Neurons to Natural Stimuli: Maximally Informative Invariant Dimensions Tatyana Sharpee, Michael Eickenberg, Ryan Rowekamp, and Minjoon Kouh Sparse Coding on the Spot: Spontaneous Retinal Waves Suffice for Orientation Selectivity Geoffrey J Goodhill, Jonathan J Hunt, and Michael Ibbotson Bayesian Community Detection Morten Moerup, and Mikkel N Schmidt Learning the Dynamics of Objects by Optimal Functional Interpolation In Young Kim, and Jong-Hoon Ahn Inhibition in Multiclass Classification Ramon Huerta, Shankar Vembu, Jose M. Amigo, Thomas Nowotny, and Charles Elkan Multi-label Classification with Principal Label Space Transformation Hsuan-Tien Lin, and Farbound Tai ----- ON-LINE - http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/neco SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2012 - VOLUME 24 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic only Student/Retired $70 $193 $65 Individual $124 $187 $115 Institution $1,035 $1,098 $926 Canada: Add 5% GST MIT Press Journals 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu http://mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp ----- From kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Tue Aug 21 13:22:51 2012 From: kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Janina Kirsch) Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:22:51 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for applications: FENS-IBRO-Hertie Winter School: Brain Dynamics and Dynamics of Brain Disease Message-ID: <000501cd7fc1$98e01390$caa03ab0$@uni-freiburg.de> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% %% %% FENS-IBRO-Hertie Winter School: %% %% Brain Dynamics and Dynamics of Brain Disease %% %% %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% http://fenswinterschool.org/ Increased life expectancy comes with an increase of the incidence of brain disorders, resulting in huge social and financial costs. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand the neural mechanisms underlying brain disorders, and to suggest new perspectives on diagnostics and therapeutic intervention. Several brain disorders (e.g. Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, sleep disorders, stroke), despite their multiple genetic and physiological preconditions, exhibit altered neuronal activity and, hence, can be described as disorders of brain dynamics. Tools from computational neuroscience can be extended to reveal and understand the neural mechanisms underlying brain function and dysfunction, and even suggest new therapeutic strategies. This intensive course presents a unique opportunity to initiate a dialog between theoreticians and experimentalists, with the aim to support the development of computational models of brain disorders that can be characterized as dynamic diseases. Confirmed Speakers: Abeles Moshe [Bar-Illan University, Israel] Bergman, Hagai [Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel] Brunel, Nicolas [CNRS, Paris, France & University of Chicago, IL, USA] Cash, Sydney [Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, MA, USA] Clausen Jens [University of Tuebingen, Germany] Deco, Gustavo [Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain] Destexhe, Alain [CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France] Ehrlich, Ingrid [Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, T?bingen, Germany] Gr?n, Sonja [Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, J?lich, Germany] Roxin, Alex [Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain] Sompolinsky, Haim [Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel & Harvard University, MA, USA] Uhlhaas, Peter [Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany] van Someren, Eus [Netherland Institute of Neuroscience, Amsterdam, The Netherlands] Weiller, Cornelius [University of Freiburg, Germany] Yizhar, Ofer [Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel] Application deadline: October 1, 2012 ? APPLY HERE: http://fenswinterschool.org/application_and_tuition_fee.html Scientific Organizers: Dr. Arvind Kumar (arvind.kumar at biologie.uni-freiburg.de) Prof. Dr. Ad Aertsen (ad.aertsen at biologie.uni-freiburg.de) Prof. Dr. Stefan Rotter (stefan.rotter at biologie.uni-freiburg.de) [University of Freiburg, Germany (Faculty of Biology, Bernstein Center Freiburg), Freiburg, Germany] Local Organizer: Alois Saria (alois.saria at i-med.ac.at) Medical University Innsbruck, INNSBRUCK Austria From steve at bu.edu Wed Aug 22 04:49:40 2012 From: steve at bu.edu (Stephen Grossberg) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:49:40 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: three articles on head direction, grid, and place cell learning Message-ID: The following three articles are now available at http://cns.bu.edu~steve about how head direction, grid, and place cells are learned. Pilly, P.K. and Grossberg, S. (2012). How do spatial learning and memory occur in the brain? Coordinated learning of entorhinal grid cells and hippocampal place cells. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, in press. Abstract Spatial learning and memory are important for navigation and the formation of episodic memories. The hippocampus and medial entorhinal cortex are key brain areas for spatial learning and memory. Place cells in hippocampus fire whenever an animal is located in a specific region in the environment. Grid cells in the superficial layers of medial entorhinal cortex provide inputs to place cells, and exhibit remarkable regular hexagonal spatial firing patterns that tessellate a whole environment during navigation. They also exhibit a gradient of spatial scales along the dorsoventral axis of the medial entorhinal cortex, with neighboring cells at a given dorsoventral location having different spatial phases. A neural model shows how a hierarchy of self- organizing maps, each obeying the same laws, responds to realistic rat trajectories by learning grid cells with hexagonal grid firing fields of multiple spatial scales and place cells with unimodal firing fields that fit neurophysiological data about these cells and their development in juvenile rats. The hippocampal place fields represent much larger spaces than the grid cells, indeed spaces large enough to support navigational behaviors. Despite their different appearance, both types of receptive fields are learned because each of the self-organizing maps amplifies and learns to categorize the most energetic and frequent co-occurrences of their inputs. Top-down attentional mechanisms from hippocampus to medial entorhinal cortex help to dynamically stabilize these spatial memories. Neurophysiological data are summarized that support this hypothesis. Spatial learning through medial entorhinal cortex to hippocampus occurs in parallel with temporal learning through lateral entorhinal cortex to hippocampus. Together these homologous spatial and temporal representations illustrate a kind of ?neural relativity? that may provide a substrate for episodic learning and memory. *************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Grossberg, S., and Pilly, P.K. (2012). How entorhinal grid cells may learn multiple spatial scales from a dorsoventral gradient of cell response rates in a self-organizing map. PLoS Computational Biology, in press. Abstract Place cells in the hippocampus of higher mammals are critical for spatial navigation. Recent modeling clarifies how this may be achieved by how grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) input to place cells. Grid cells exhibit hexagonal grid firing patterns across space in multiple spatial scales along the MEC dorsoventral axis. Signals from grid cells of multiple scales combine adaptively to activate place cells that represent much larger spaces than grid cells. But how do grid cells learn to fire at multiple positions that form a hexagonal grid, and with spatial scales that increase along the dorsoventral axis? In vitro recordings of medial entorhinal layer II stellate cells have revealed subthreshold membrane potential oscillations (MPOs) whose temporal periods, and time constants of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs), both increase along this axis. Slower (faster) subthreshold MPOs and slower (faster) EPSPs correlate with larger (smaller) grid spacings and field widths. A self-organizing map neural model explains how the anatomical gradient of grid spatial scales can be learned by cells that respond more slowly along the gradient to their inputs from stripe cells of multiple scales, which perform linear velocity path integration. The model cells also exhibit MPO frequencies that covary with their response rates. The gradient in intrinsic rhythmicity is thus not compelling evidence for oscillatory interference as a mechanism of grid cell firing. A response rate gradient combined with input stripe cells that have normalized receptive fields can all known spatial and temporal properties of grid cells along the MEC dorsoventral axis. This spatial gradient mechanism is homologous to a gradient mechanism for temporal learning in the lateral entorhinal cortex and its hippocampal projections. Spatial and temporal representations may hereby arise from homologous mechanisms, thereby embodying a mechanistic ?neural relativity? that may clarify how episodic memories are learned. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************** Fortenberry, B., Gorchetchnikov, A. and Grossberg, S. (2012). Learned integration of visual, vestibular, and motor cues in multiple brain regions computes head direction during visually-guided navigation. Hippocampus, in press. Abstract Effective navigation depends upon reliable estimates of head direction (HD). Visual, vestibular, and outflow motor signals combine for this purpose in a brain system that includes dorsal tegmental nucleus, lateral mammillary nuclei, anterior dorsal thalamic nucleus, and the postsubiculum. Learning is needed to combine such different cues to provide reliable estimates of HD. A neural model is developed to explain how these three types of signals combine adaptively within the above brain regions to generate a consistent and reliable HD estimate, in both light and darkness, which explains the following experimental facts. Each HD cell is tuned to a preferred head direction. The cell?s firing rate is maximal at the preferred direction and decreases as the head turns from the preferred direction. The HD estimate is controlled by the vestibular system when visual cues are not available. A well-established visual cue anchors the cell?s preferred direction when the cue is in the animal?s field of view. Distal visual cues are more effective than proximal cues for anchoring the preferred direction. The introduction of novel cues in either a novel or familiar environment can gain control over a cell?s preferred direction within minutes. Turning out the lights or removing all familiar cues does not change the cell?s firing activity, but it may accumulate a drift in the cell?s preferred direction. The anticipated time interval (ATI) of the HD estimate is greater in early processing stages of the HD system than at later stages. The model contributes to an emerging unified neural model of how multiple processing stages in spatial navigation, including postsubiculum head direction cells, entorhinal grid cells, and hippocampal place cells, are calibrated through learning in response to multiple types of signals as an animal navigates in the world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120822/32d9e0dd/attachment-0001.html From Michael_Frank at brown.edu Wed Aug 22 10:01:53 2012 From: Michael_Frank at brown.edu (Michael J Frank) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:01:53 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Assistant Professor, Brown University In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: HUMAN COGNITION, BROWN UNIVERSITY: The Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in adult human cognition beginning July 1, 2013. Applicants in all areas of adult human cognition will be considered (e.g., memory, attention, conceptual structure, decision making, reasoning, etc.) with computational skills highly valued. Applicants must have broad teaching abilities in adult cognition at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, a high-quality research program, and an appropriate record of accomplishment. Brown has a highly interdisciplinary research environment in the study of mind, brain, behavior, and language, including the recently created Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences housed within a newly renovated, state-of-the-art building in the heart of campus, and the multi-departmental Institute for Brain Science. Curriculum vitae, reprints and preprints of publications, a maximum two-page statement of research interests, a one-page statement of teaching interests, and three letters of reference should be submitted through Interfolio http://www.interfolio.com/apply/14260. All Ph.D. requirements must be completed by July 1, 2013. Applications received by October 15, 2012 will receive full consideration. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Brown University is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer. -- Michael J Frank, PhD, Associate Professor Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition Brown University http://ski.clps.brown.edu From rune2earth at gmail.com Wed Aug 22 04:02:37 2012 From: rune2earth at gmail.com (Rune Berg) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 10:02:37 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position available in Copenhagen Message-ID: <08994773-8D31-4FD9-B3EC-A0FF77EE2D8C@gmaill.com> Postdoctoral Research position in Neuroscience Copenhagen, Denmark: We?re seeking a postdoctoral fellow for research in the motor pattern generation in the spinal cord as well as neuronal network analysis, in animal experimental models. The lab uses intra-cellular recordings from neurons embedded in the active networks in conjunction with multi-site recordings. The successful candidate will join an expanding and dynamic research group (Berg?s Lab), which emphasizes combining theoretical, computational neuroscience with a strong experiment priority. The candidate will also participate in the research projects on several levels, including data acquisition and analysis, scholarly writing of journal reports for peer review, mentoring/teaching as well as development of novel research questions. Required Qualifications: PhD degree in neuroscience, neurophysics, physics, neurobiology or closely related fields. Demonstrated programming skills in matlab. Excellent verbal and communicative skills Ability to work and learn independently Strong background in analytical thinking. Preferred Qualifications: Experience with Spike sorting techniques, and other electrophysiology techniques, intracellular/patch clamp recordings. Experience in basic neuropharmacology and possibly genetic manipulations (opto-genetics). Experience with graph theory. Duration of employment: Minimum two years with possibility of extension. Terms of employment: The position will be filled according to the agreement between the Danish ministry of finance and the Danish confederation of professional associations. The position is covered by the protocol on job structure and the salary will be scale 6 of the University of Copenhagen, which is approximately 383 000 dkk/ year (63 0000 USD/year). Applications: You apply here: http://www.ku.dk/english/available_positions/vip/ Go to the link saying "Postdoctoral research position in neuroscience" Deadline 01/10/2012 Application deadline is October 1st, 2012. Application must include: Curriculum vitae. Publication list. Minimum of 2 relevant letters of recommandation (from previous employers if applicable). Graduation papers/diploma. For further question please contact: Rune W. Berg Associate professor in Neuroscience University of Copenhagen Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology (12.5.5) Blegdamsvej 3 DK-2200 Copenhagen N DENMARK Tel: (+45) 35 32 75 60 Mobile: (+45) 26977394 Email: rune at berg-lab.net Email: runeb at sund.ku.dk www.berg-lab.net www.healthsciences.ku.dk Apply online Deadline: 01-10-2012 Publisher: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen Rune W. Berg, PhD University of Copenhagen Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology (12.5.5) Blegdamsvej 3 DK-2200 Copenhagen N DENMARK Tel: (+45) 35 32 75 60 Fax: (+45) 35 32 75 55 Email: rune at berg-lab.net Skype ID: rune2earth www.berg-lab.net www.sund.ku.dk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120822/ae5d8428/attachment.html From longlifelee at gmail.com Wed Aug 22 08:27:36 2012 From: longlifelee at gmail.com (Soo-Young Lee) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:27:36 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Third issue of Natural Intelligence: the INNS Magazine Message-ID: The third issue of Natural Intelligence: the INNS Magazine is now on the web at www.inns.org and www.ni-inns.info (user-friendly version). Natural Intelligence is the official magazine of INNS (International Neural Network Society). We define ?Natural Intelligence? to include both ?intelligence existing in nature? and ?intelligence based on the state of things in nature?. Therefore, the new INNS magazine ?Natural Intelligence? plans to cover - experiments - computational models - applications of the intelligent functions in our brains. Also, there is an important need for well-written introductory papers targeting both young and established researchers from other academic backgrounds. The interdisciplinary nature of the many new emerging topics makes these introductory papers essential for research on Natural Intelligence. Therefore, the new INNS magazine will mainly publish - review papers - white papers - tutorials. In addition, columns, news, and reports on the communities will also be included. YOUR SUBMISSION IS WELCOME. Please send your submission to inns.ni at gmail.com ------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS: Vol. 1, Issue 3, Sprint/Summer 2012 TUTORIAL A Computational Introduction to the Biological Brain-Mind by Juyang Weng REVIEW PAPER Challenges for Brain Emulation: Why is Building a Brain so Difficult? by Rick Cattell and Alice Parker Autonomy Rebuilt: Rethinking Traditional Ethics towards a Comprehensive Account of Autonomous Moral Agency by Jeffrey Benjamin White LETTER Human-Centred Multivariate Complexity Analysis by David Looney, Mosabber U. Ahmed, and Danilo P. Mandic -- Soo-Young Lee Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST From quocle at stanford.edu Wed Aug 22 16:14:37 2012 From: quocle at stanford.edu (Quoc V. Le) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:14:37 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - Deep Learning and Unsupervised Feature Learning Workshop at NIPS 2012 Message-ID: Call for Papers: Deep Learning and Unsupervised Feature Learning Workshop held in conjunction with Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2012) December 7 or 8 (TBD), 2011, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA. https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningnips2012/ Overview ------------------------------------ In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in algorithms that learn feature representations from unlabeled data. Deep learning algorithms such as deep belief networks, sparse coding-based methods, autoencoder variants, convolutional networks, ICA methods, and deep Boltzmann machines have shown promise and have already been successfully applied to a variety of tasks in computer vision, audio processing, natural language processing, information retrieval, and robotics. In this workshop, we will bring together researchers who are interested in deep learning and unsupervised feature learning, review the recent technical progress, discuss the challenges, and identify promising future research directions. The workshop invites paper submissions that will be either presented as oral or in poster format. Through invited talks, panel discussions and presentations by the participants, this workshop attempts to address some of the more controversial topics in deep learning today, such as what is a good representation, how it could be learned, and what obstacles need to be addressed in future research. Panel discussions will be led by the members of the organizing committee as well as by prominent representatives of the vision and neuroscience communities. The goal of this workshop is two-fold. First, we want to identify the next big challenges and propose research directions for the deep learning community. Second, we want to bridge the gap between researchers working on different (but related) fields, to leverage their expertise, and to encourage the exchange of ideas with all the other members of the NIPS community. Dates ------------------------------------ - Submission deadline: September 16, 2012 - Acceptance notification: October 7, 2012 - Workshop date: December 7 or 8, 2012 (TBD) A tentative schedule is available at: https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningnips2012/ Submissions ------------------------------------ We solicit submissions of unpublished research papers. Papers should be at most 8 pages (plus 1 additional page containing references only) and must satisfy the formatting instructions of the NIPS 2012 call for papers. Style files are available at http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/StyleFiles. Please note that the reviewing is double blind, so your manuscript should not contain authors? identifying information. Papers should be submitted through https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/DL2012/ no later than 23:59 EST on Sunday, September 16, 2012. We encourage submissions on the following and related topics: * unsupervised feature learning algorithms * deep learning algorithms * semi-supervised and transfer learning algorithms * inference and optimization * theoretical foundations of unsupervised learning * theoretical foundations of deep learning * applications of deep learning and unsupervised feature learning The best papers will be awarded by an oral presentation, all other accepted papers will have a poster presentation accompanied by a short spotlight presentation. Organizers ------------------------------------ * Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal * James Bergstra, Harvard University * Quoc V. Le, Stanford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120822/328d2057/attachment.html From tani1216jp at gmail.com Fri Aug 24 02:01:28 2012 From: tani1216jp at gmail.com (Jun Tani) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:01:28 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Ph.D position in cognitive neuro-robotics at KAIST in spring 2013 Message-ID: <022f01cd81bd$e91741f0$bb45c5d0$@gmail.com> ** Ph.D position in neuro-robotics at KAIST in spring 2013 ** There are a few Ph.D positions with salary and scholarship associated with projects in Cognitive Neuro-Robotics Lab newly established by Prof. Jun Tani in EE Dept. of KAIST in South Korea. The position starts from spring 2013. http://neurorobot.kaist.ac.kr/ The candidate will develop neuro-dynamic models in the framework of generative model/predictive coding which are experimented with humanoid robots under various cognitive tasks. Our focus on the neuro-robotic synthetic experiments include developments of actional compositionality and functional hierarchy, language and sensory-motor interactions, social cognition by mutual reading of other's intentions, reconstruction of psychiatric disease symptoms (schizophrenia and autism), developmental educational learning of robots with large-scale brain network models and etc. The candidate should be highly motivated and have a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Physics, or a related field of study. The ideal candidate has excellent programming skills in C or C-plus preferably in Unix environments and a clear interest in neural network modeling, cognitive neuroscience and nonlinear dynamics. An interested candidate should apply for KAIST admission for Ph.D study with scholoship through the web page http://admission.kaist.ac.kr/web/intl/2013-spring-semester The deadline is middle of September. KAIST is an English speaking institute. Contact should be made to: Jun Tani, Ph.D Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, KAIST http://neurorobot.kaist.ac.kr/ tani1216jp at gmail.com +82-42-350-7428 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120824/7969b464/attachment.html From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Thu Aug 23 03:49:11 2012 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:49:11 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: Cognitive Computation CfP for SI: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor (***SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED***) Message-ID: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// *** Submission Deadline Extended to October 1st, 2012*** Cognitive Computation - Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor ////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// * DESCRIPTION The scope of the special issue is to celebrate the work of the late Professor John G Taylor. Professor Taylor began his career in 1956 as a theoretical physicist and has contributed many seminal papers and books to high energy physics, black holes, quantum gravity and string theory. He held positions in leading Universities in the UK, USA and Europe in physics and mathematics. He created the Centre for Neural Networks at King?s College, London, in 1990, and is still its Director. He was appointed Emeritus Professor of Mathematics of London University in 1996. He was Guest Scientist at the Research Centre in Juelich, Germany, 1996-8, working on brain imaging and data analysis. He has acted as consultant in Neural Networks to several companies. He is the Director of Research on Global Bond products and Tactical Asset Allocation for a financial investment company involved in time series prediction. He is presently European Editor-in-Chief of the journal *Neural Networks *and was President of the International Neural Network Society (1995) and the European Neural Network Society (1993/4). Since 2009, he is founding Chair of the Advisory Editorial Board for the journal *Cognitive Computation*. Prof. Taylor worked in the field of Neural Networks since 1969. He has contributed ever since to all aspects of neural networks and cognitive computation including their applications to finance and robotics. Specifically, research topics Prof. Taylor contributed to include but are not limited to: -- Noisy nets, synapses and the pRAM chip -- Dynamics of learning processes -- Mathematical analysis of neural networks and their hardware implementations -- Neural network models of perception, attention, learning and memory, decision making, motor control, cognitive control, observational learning, emotions, thinking, reasoning, conceptualization, knowledge representation, language and consciousness -- Neural network applications to finance, robotics and brain imaging The issue will consider original research articles, review articles, letters and commentaries from former and current students, junior and senior colleagues of Professor Taylor. All submitted articles should clearly state in what way their work is based on Prof. Taylor?s previous research and how it extends it. * EDITORS The reviewing process will be supervised by guest Editors (VassilisCutsuridis and Amir Hussain), together with theeditorial Board of the Cognitive Computation journal. * DEADLINES Deadlines are as follows: -- Submission deadline: October 1, 2012 -- Review deadline: December 1, 2012 -- Author notification: December 2, 2012 -- Author?s response: February 1, 2013 -- Publication by journal: ~April, 2013 Electronic submissions for the Cognitive Computation journal can be found under http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559 Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Celebrating the work of the late Prof. John G Taylor". Kind regards, Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120823/fbc1b873/attachment-0001.html From compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de Mon Aug 27 04:55:41 2012 From: compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de (Compsens) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 10:55:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PHD POSITION: COMPUTATIONAL NEURAL MECHANISMS OF THE NEURAL ENCODING OF ACTION SAMANTICS (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Tuebingen, Germany) Message-ID: <20120827105541.10212g7abu8iwoi5@webmail.uni-tuebingen.de> PHD POSITION: COMPUTATIONAL NEURAL MECHANISMS OF THE NEURAL ENCODING OF ACTION SAMANTICS (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Tuebingen, Germany) ============================================================= Action perception and action execution are tightly linked in the brain, and how these funcions are neurally encoded has received a lot of interest in recent research in neuroscience. The clarification of the underlying neural mechanisms requires the tight interaction between theoretical and experimental neuroscience. Collaborating closely with physiologists from the Department of Cognitive Neurology and M.I.T., we investigate experimentally the neural encoding of actions during perception and execution. We develop physiologically-inspired neural and probabilistic models for the visual processing of actions and its interaction with motor representations. Applying advanced statistical Bayesian approaches, we investigate the semantic structure of action representations based on neural data, and we exploit advanced technologies for online animation in order to investigate the dynamics of neural representations of actions in premotor cortex. We look for a theoretically oriented researcher with strong interest in physiology and systems neuroscience. Ideal candidates for this position should have: * a Masters degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or Biology with good mathematical and reasonable programming skills * Basic knowledge about neural networks or machine learning, or models of biological functions * programming experience (Matlab, C++, or Python) * a strong interest in theoretical and experimental neuroscience, and especially in higher-level vision, motor control, or cognition * English speaking and writing skills. Applications with inappropriate background (e.g. in molecular or cell biology) will not be considered. Committed to Equal Opportunities. The Section of Computational Sensomotorics is working on computational and neural models of action processing, and technical applications related to action perception and control. Our lab is part of the Dept. of Cognitive Neurology at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH), a leading European institution in Clinical Neuroscience. It is also part of the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), an Excellence cluster from the German Research organization with more than 70 groups working on different aspects of systems neuroscience, and of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in T?bingen. Please send applications preferentially electronically (including CV, marks and 2 letters of reference) as soon as possible to Prof. Dr. Martin Giese, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Otfried-Mueller-Str. 25, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany; email: martin.giese at uni-tuebingen.de From gert at ucsd.edu Fri Aug 24 14:27:21 2012 From: gert at ucsd.edu (Gert Cauwenberghs) Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 11:27:21 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Monday 8/27 @ EMBC'2012: IEEE EMB/CAS/SMC Workshop on Brain-Machine-Body Interfaces Message-ID: Final Call for Participation *IEEE EMB/CAS/SMC Workshop on Brain-Machine-Body Interfaces* http://embc2012.embs.org/program/bmbi *When:* Monday August 27, 2012 (directly preceding EMBC 2012) 8:00am-6:30pm *Where:* Sapphire A, San Diego Bayfront Hilton San Diego, California, USA *Program, Schedule, and Registration:* Please see http://embc2012.embs.org/program/bmbi Brain-machine interfaces (BMI), or brain-computer interfaces (BCI), extend the capacity of the human brain in directly communicating and interacting with the environment. BMI/BCI research has traditionally focused on harnessing this capability for applications of neural prostheses in restoring communication and mobility of the motor impaired. A larger range of clinical applications are now emerging that extend the BMI/BCI and neural prostheses paradigms to brain-machine-body interfaces, harnessing benefits of neuromodulation and sensory feedback in interfacing across the central and peripheral nervous systems, facilitating closed-loop and minimally-invasive remediation of neurological and motor disorders, and more generally encompassing mind-body in health and wellbeing. This 3rd workshop in a series co-sponsored by the IEEE EMB, CAS, and SMC Societies highlights advances in brain-machine-body interface technology and its myriad applications promoting health and wellness that result from synergies between scientists, engineers, and clinical practitioners in this rapidly emerging field. Held on Monday August 27, 2012 in conjunction with EMBC'12, the workshop combines invited lectures by leading experts with an exciting and highly interactive program of solicited contributions, including live demonstrations, and poster and spotlight presentations. All attendees are also invited to participate in a panel discussion on future directions in brain-machine-body interfaces, and in the selection of best poster and demonstration awards at the conclusion of the workshop program. *Contact:* *Workshop Chair:* Gert Cauwenberghs, UC San Diego, USA, gert at ucsd.edu *Workshop Co-Chairs:* Maysam Ghovanloo, Georgia Tech, USA, mgh at gatech.edu Jos? del R. Mill?n, EPFL, Switzerland, jose.millan at epfl.ch *Organizing Committee:* Metin Akay, Univ. of Houston, USA Bin He, Univ. of Minnesota, USA Paul Sajda, Columbia Univ., USA Mohamad Sawan, Ecole Polytechnique de Montr?al, Canada Nitish Thakor, Johns Hopkins Univ., USA; National Univ. of Singapore James Weiland, Univ. of Southern California, USA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120824/c0c58e06/attachment.html From rish at us.ibm.com Mon Aug 27 12:21:55 2012 From: rish at us.ibm.com (Irina Rish) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:21:55 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: =?iso-8859-1?q?CFP=3A_MLINI-2012=3A_=A02nd_=A0Wor?= =?iso-8859-1?q?kshop_on_Machine=A0Learning=A0and=A0Inference=A0in=A0Neuro?= =?iso-8859-1?q?imaging=A0at_NIPS-2012?= Message-ID: Call for Papers MLINI-2012: ?2nd ?Workshop on Machine?Learning?and?Inference?in Neuroimaging?at NIPS-2012 https://sites.google.com/site/nipsmlini2012/ December 7-8, 2012, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, United States Submission deadline: October 1st, 2012 Workshop Overview: ------------------------ MLINI is a two day workshop on the topic of machine learning approaches in neuroscience and neuroimaging. We believe that both machine learning and neuroimaging can learn from each other as the two communities overlap and enter an intense exchange of ideas and research questions. Methodological developments in machine learning spurn novel paradigms in neuroimaging, while neuroscience motivates methodological advances in computational analysis. In this context many controversies and open questions exist. The goal of the workshop is to pinpoint these issues, sketch future directions, and tackle open questions in the light of novel methodology. The first workshop of this series at NIPS 2011 built upon earlier events in 2006 and 2008. Last year's workshop included many invited speakers, and was centered around two panel discussions, during which 2 questions were discussed: the interpretability of machine learning findings, and the shift of paradigms in the neuroscience community. The discussion was inspiring, and made clear, that there is a tremendous amount the two communities can learn from each other benefiting from communication across the disciplines. The aim of the 2nd MLINI workshop is to continue exploring important issues on the intersection of ML and neuroimaging and further promote cross-fertilization between ? these communities. Besides interpretation, and the shift of paradigms, many open questions remain. Among them: How suitable are MVPA and inference methods for brain mapping? How can we use these approaches for a flexible and useful representation of neuroimaging data? What is the role of decoding vs. embedded or separate feature selection? How can we assess the specificity and sensitivity? What can we accomplish with generative vs. discriminative modelling? Can and should the Machine Learning community provide a standard repertoire of methods for the Neuroimaging community to use (e.g. in choosing a classifier)? Workshop Format: -------------------------- In this two-day workshop we will explore perspectives and novel methodology at the interface of Machine Learning, Inference, Neuroimaging and Neuroscience. We aim to bring researchers from machine learning and neuroscience community together, in order to discuss open questions, identify the core points for a number of the controversial issues, and eventually propose approaches to solving those issues. The workshop will be structured around the following main topics: - machine learning and pattern analysis methodology in neuroimaging - causal inference and interpretability in neuroimaging - evaluation of machine learning ?methods ?in light of clinical applications - linking machine learning methodology with neuroscience or neuroimaging questions Each session will be opened by 2-3 invited talks, and an in depth discussion. This will be followed by original contributions. Original contributions will also be presented and discussed during a poster session. The workshop will end with a panel discussion, during which we will address specific questions, and invited speakers will open each segment with a brief presentation of their opinion. This workshop proposal is part of the PASCAL2 Thematic Programme on Cognitive Inference and Neuroimaging ?( http://mlin.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/ ). Paper Submission: -------------------------- We seek for submission of original (previously unpublished) research papers. The length of the?submitted papers?should not exceed 8 pages?in Springer format,??excluding the references (LaTeX2e style ?files?are available on the workshop page). Submission of previously published work is possible as well, but the authors are required to mention this explicitly. Previously published work can be presented at the workshop, but will not be included into the workshop proceedings (which are considered peer-reviewed publications of novel contributions). ?Moreover, the authors are welcome to present their novel work but choose to opt out of the workshop proceedings in case they have alternative publication plans. Important dates: -------------------------- - ?October 1, 2012 - paper submission - ?October 15, 2012? -? notification of acceptance/rejection - ?December 7-8, 2012 - ?Workshop in Lake Tahoe, Nevada US, following the NIPS conference Invited Speakers: -------------------------- Jack Gallant (UC Berkeley) Bertrand Thirion (INRIA, Neurospin) Jean-Baptiste Poline (Neurospin) Mert Sabuncu (MGH, Harvard Medical School) ? ? ? ? (more to be confirmed) Organizing Committee: -------------------------- Guillermo Cecchi (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) Kai-min Kevin Chang (Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University) Moritz?Grosse-Wentrup?(Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, T?bingen, Germany) Georg?Langs?(Medical University of Vienna, CSAIL, MIT) Bjoern Menze (ETH Zuerich, CSAIL, MIT) Brian Murphy?(Machine Learning Department, Carngie Mellon University) Irina?Rish?(IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) ------------------------------------------------- Irina Rish Research Staff Member IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Computational Biology Center 1101 Kitchawan Rd., Rm. 04-106 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 Tel 914 945 1896 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120827/2a8de314/attachment-0001.html From robbie at bcs.rochester.edu Tue Aug 28 13:48:48 2012 From: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu (Robert Jacobs) Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:48:48 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 3 faculty positions at the University of Rochester Message-ID: <503D0480.4020502@bcs.rochester.edu> *Faculty Positions in Cognitive Science and Neuroscience, University of Rochester* ** *The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester*has multiple openings for tenure-track faculty members in the general areas of cognitive science and neuroscience.We are seeking to hire outstanding faculty in three areas: *Cognition*:Research interests could include action, attention, categorization, decision making, learning, memory, and perception, and could also include approaches such as cognitive development, cognitive neuroscience, computational modeling, and neuropsychology. *Language*: Applicants are sought with a specialization in natural language production, comprehension or acquisition, including those who adopt primarily cognitive neuroscience, computational and behavioral approaches. *Systems/Computational Neuroscience*: We are primarily interested in candidates who employ experimental and/or computational neuroscience approaches to address fundamental questions regarding the neural basis of behavior. Specific areas of interest include sensory neural coding, motor control, decision-making, plasticity, learning and memory. Successful candidates will join a dynamic, collegial department whose focus is the study of development, cognition, and perception through combined neurobiological, computational, and behavioral research. Further information and application instructions regarding each position can be found at the following website: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/jobs/faculty.html#bcsfac. Questions concerning these positions can be addressed to Dr. Gregory C. DeAngelis, chair of the department [email: gdeangelis at cvs.rochester.edu].Review of applications will begin on October 15, 2012.The University of Rochester is an Equal Opportunity Employer and has a strong commitment to diversity and actively encourages applications from candidates from groups underrepresented in higher education. // // -- Robert Jacobs Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627-0268 email: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu phone: 585-275-0753 web: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/people.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120828/9d145899/attachment.html From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Wed Aug 29 07:00:02 2012 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:00:02 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: ***SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED*** - Cognitive Computation CfP for SI: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor Message-ID: > > //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// > > *** Submission Deadline Extended to *October 1st, 2012**** > > Cognitive Computation - Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John > G Taylor > > ////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// > > * DESCRIPTION > > The scope of the special issue is to celebrate the work of the late > Professor John G Taylor. Professor Taylor began his career in 1956 as a > theoretical physicist and has contributed many seminal papers and books to > high energy physics, black holes, quantum gravity and string theory. He > held positions in leading Universities in the UK, USA and Europe in physics > and mathematics. He created the Centre for Neural Networks at King?s > College, London, in 1990, and is still its Director. He was appointed > Emeritus Professor of Mathematics of London University in 1996. He was > Guest Scientist at the Research Centre in Juelich, Germany, 1996-8, > working on brain imaging and data analysis. He has acted as consultant in > Neural Networks to several companies. He is the Director of Research on > Global Bond products and Tactical Asset Allocation for a financial > investment company involved in time series prediction. He is presently > European Editor-in-Chief of the journal *Neural Networks *and was > President of the International Neural Network Society (1995) and the > European Neural Network Society (1993/4). Since 2009, he is founding Chair > of the Advisory Editorial Board for the journal *Cognitive Computation*. > > > > Prof. Taylor worked in the field of Neural Networks since 1969. He has > contributed ever since to all aspects of neural > > networks and cognitive computation including their applications to finance > and robotics. > > > > Specifically, research topics Prof. Taylor contributed to include but are > not limited to: > > > -- Noisy nets, synapses and the pRAM chip > > -- Dynamics of learning processes > > -- Mathematical analysis of neural networks and their > hardware implementations > > -- Neural network models of perception, attention, learning and memory, > decision making, motor control, cognitive control, observational learning, > emotions, thinking, reasoning, conceptualization, knowledge representation, > language and consciousness > > -- Neural network applications to finance, robotics and brain imaging > > > The issue will consider original research articles, review articles, > letters and commentaries from former and current students, junior and > senior colleagues of Professor Taylor. All submitted articles should > clearly state in what way their work is based on Prof. Taylor?s previous > research and how it extends it. > > > > * EDITORS > > The reviewing process will be supervised by guest Editors (VassilisCutsuridis and Amir Hussain), together with theeditorial Board of the Cognitive Computation journal. > > > * DEADLINES > > Deadlines are as follows: > > > -- Submission deadline: October 1, 2012 > > -- Review deadline: December 1, 2012 > > -- Author notification: December 2, 2012 > > -- Author?s response: February 1, 2013 > > -- Publication by journal: ~April, 2013 > > Electronic submissions for the Cognitive Computation journal can be found > under http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559 > Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special > issue "Celebrating the work of the late Prof. John G Taylor". > > > Kind regards, > Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120829/5a0e6b4a/attachment.html From jim.austin at york.ac.uk Thu Aug 30 04:03:32 2012 From: jim.austin at york.ac.uk (Jim Austin) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 09:03:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Advert for lectureship Message-ID: <503f1e6a.08cd0e0a.69ba.1fc5@mx.google.com> Senior Lecturer in Neural Computation University of York, UK - Department Of Computer Science Applications are invited for a Senior Lecturer in Neural Computation, in the highly regarded Computer Science Department, to contribute to the Department's established neural networks research. Further information about the Department can be found at: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/. Informal enquiries may be made in the first instance to the Professor Jim Austin, who leads much of the Neural Computation research in the Department. Communication may be by telephone (+44 (0) 1904 325629) or e-mail (austin at cs.york.ac.uk ). The post will have a salary in the range of ?45,846 - ?52,706 (depending on experience). The post is available from 1 January 2013. Closing date: Tuesday 18 September 2012 For further information and to apply on-line, please visit our website: https://jobs.york.ac.uk/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_job?p_web_site_id=3885&p_web _page_id=155705 Alternatively contact HR Services on +44 (0)1904 324835. The University of York is committed to promoting equality and diversity. From klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de Thu Aug 30 13:01:07 2012 From: klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de (Klaus Gramann) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:01:07 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2 open positions at Berlin Institute of Technology Message-ID: There are two open positions at the Berlin Institute of Technology based in the lab of Dr. Klaus Gramann to work in an interdisciplinary team on mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI). Please see details below. ******************************************************************************************************************** *E**mployee in the application-programming** **- Entgeltgruppe 11 TV-L Berliner Hochschulen * * * *School V* - Department of Psychology and Ergonomics/ Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics *Reference number:* V-125 (closing date for applications 27.09.2012) *Working field:* Conception, implementation, and continuous development of three labs equipped with EEG, motion capture, eye movement, peripheral physiology, and virtual reality; Programming of experimental environments using different software (MATLAB, Python, C++, WorldViz, Presentation) as well as testing and further developing a software architecture for synchronizing different data streams wirelessly and in real time; Acquisition/collection of EEG data, motion capture data, and other related data (i.e. ECG, EMG, EOG, EDA); Ordering of supplies and equipment for the lab and scheduling experiments for the group; Training of members of the group and students in the acceptable use and maintenance of different systems (hardware and software); Maintenance of all safety documentation of the laboratory as well as the IRB approved signed consent forms of the different studies running in the lab; Preparation of documents concerning the smooth operation of the lab (brochures, technical specifications documents, etc.); Performance of routine tests for specific research projects, using sophisticated and intricate research equipment and techniques, troubleshooting problems with own and other researchers' results *Requirements:* As a successful candidate you should hold a relevant university of applied science degree in the areas engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, neuroscience, or equivalent skills and experience; previous experience in EEG or biomechanics research is favorable; basic understanding of electromagnetic theory and biomechanics; English fluency for frequent interactions with international faculty and collaborating labs in the US and Taiwan/ for further Information please contact: Prof. DR. Gramann (E-Mail: klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de) Please send your application with the *reference number* and the relevant documents (cover letter and CV, including a summary of your experience and goals and the name and contact information of one reference) to Prof. Dr. Gramann (klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de). To ensure equal opportunities between men and women, applications from women with the respective qualifications are explicitly desired. Part-time employment may be possible. Handicapped applicants with equal qualifications are preferred. Please send only copies and no originals of documents, as they will not be returned by mail. The vacancy is also available in the internet at http://www.personalabteilung.tu-ber?lin.de/menue/jobs/ ******************************************************************************************************************** *Research Assistant - Entgeltgruppe 13 TV-L Berliner Hochschulen - max. 5 years* (to receive a Phd) * * *School V*- Department of Psychology and Ergonomics/ Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics *Reference number:* WM-367 (closing date for applications 27.09.2012) *Working field:* To be part of an interdisciplinary research group to develop and conduct experiments in mobile brain/ body imaging (MoBI) using EEG, motion capture, eye movement, peripheral physiology, and virtual reality; programming of experimental protocols using different software (MATLAB, WorldViz, Presentation) and data acquisition in healthy participants; publication and presentation of results at international conferences *Requirements:* A successful candidate should hold a Master, Diploma degree or equivalent in Engineering, Movement Science, Neurosciences, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Psychology or related areas; strong programming skills (MATLAB) are essential; good English skills; experience in biomechanics and/ or Neuroscience or Cognitive Neuroscience using EEG; experience in design, analysis, and signal processing/ machine learning applied to data from complex experimental designs using EEG and/ or kinematics; additional programming skills in Python, C++ are desired but not necessary/ for more information please contact: Prof. DR. Gramann (E-Mail: klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de) Please send your application with the *reference number* and the relevant documents (cover letter and CV, including a summary of your experience and goals and the name and contact information of one reference) to Prof. Dr. Gramann (klaus.gramann at tu-berlin.de). To ensure equal opportunities between men and women, applications from women with the respective qualifications are explicitly desired. Part-time employment may be possible. Handicapped applicants with equal qualifications are preferred. Please send only copies and no originals of documents, as they will not be returned by mail. The vacancy is also available in the internet at http://www.personalabteilung.tu-ber?lin.de/menue/jobs/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120830/6fcd3ef0/attachment.html From R.Bogacz at bristol.ac.uk Fri Aug 31 04:14:21 2012 From: R.Bogacz at bristol.ac.uk (Rafal Bogacz) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:14:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position on models of decision making in Bristol Message-ID: <5040725D.4020701@bristol.ac.uk> Dear Colleagues, I would like to let you know about a fully funded 3-year interdisciplinary PhD studentship on computational models of decision making at the University of Bristol. The student will be based in Bristol University's interdisciplinary centre for research into Decision Making in an Unstable World (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/decisions-research/). The centre currently has 2 postdoctoral researchers and 4 PhD students, runs a wide variety of topic focused seminars and workshops, and offers a range of exciting collaborative opportunities. The research team is located in a newly-refurbished dedicated space. Applications are welcomed from UK/EU students who are enthusiastic and highly-motivated who possess, or will shortly obtain, a first or upper second class degree, or equivalent, in a numerate subject from across the Mathematical, Natural and Engineering Sciences (for example Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics or Physics). Applicants must demonstrate a strong desire to be part of an interdisciplinary research team that combines mathematical and computational modelling with experimental research on humans. Successful applicants will receive an EPSRC 3-year studentship covering living expenses and fees. For further information, please visit http://www.bristol.ac.uk/decisions-research/. Informal enquiries are very welcome and should be made to Dr David Leslie (david.leslie at bristol.ac.uk ) or Prof Iain Gilchrist (i.d.gilchrist at bristol.ac.uk ). Information about postgraduate study at the university, including the application procedure, is available at http://www.bris.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduate/. Please select 'Mathematics (PhD)' and indicate that that you are responding to the "Inter-disciplinary decision-making studentship advertisement" in the Research Details and Funding sections of the form. We will carry out interviews and hope to appoint to this studentship as soon as possible. The closing date for applications is 9am on the 1st October 2012. Best wishes, Rafal From tjung at ulg.ac.be Fri Aug 31 08:01:55 2012 From: tjung at ulg.ac.be (tjung@ulg.ac.be) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:01:55 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2012 Workshop on Information in Perception and Action In-Reply-To: <98878240.1256236.1346414213222.JavaMail.root@serv224.segi.ulg.ac.be> Message-ID: <176132415.1257488.1346414515862.JavaMail.root@serv224.segi.ulg.ac.be> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// INFORMATION IN PERCEPTION AND ACTION NIPS 2012 WORKSHOP December 7-8, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, United States //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Description ----------- Since its inception for describing the laws of communication in the 1940's, information theory has been considered in fields beyond its original application area and, in particular, it was long attempted to utilize it for the description of intelligent agents. Already Attneave (1954) and Barlow (1961) suspected that neural information processing might follow principles of information theory and Laughlin (1998) demonstrated that information processing comes at a high metabolic cost; this implies that there would be evolutionary pressure pushing organismic information processing towards the optimal levels of data throughput predicted by information theory. This becomes particularly interesting when one considers the whole perception-action cycle, including feedback. In the last decade, significant progress has been made in this direction, linking information theory and control. The ensuing insights allow to address a large range of fundamental questions pertaining not only to the perception-action cycle, but to general issues of intelligence, and allow to solve classical problems of AI and machine learning in a novel way. Call for Participation ---------------------- The workshop aims to present work on progress in AI, machine learning, control, as well as biologically plausible cognitive modeling that is based on information theory. We invite contributions for oral presentations that should fall in one of the following categories: - Information-theoretic methods for learning (including model learning, reinforcement learning, but also concept learning) - Information theory in control; relation with the statistical physics of control theory - Information theory in games; quantifying the value of information - Information-theoretic approaches towards general artificial intelligence, such as universal reward and utility structures (e.g., predictive information, empowerment, etc.); principled approaches towards goal and subgoal generation - Influence of "embodiment" on performance and structuring of cognitive tasks; emergence of concepts from agent-world interaction - Fundamental limits on information processing capabilities; minimal solutions for given tasks and optimal performance for constrained perception/actuation - Information- and entropy-based regularization and kernel techniques The submissions should be in the form of long (4-6 pages) or short (1/2-1 page) abstracts. Timely and novel work will be particularly considered, but also more mature work may be contributed---please indicate which one you aim for. The abstracts will be placed on the workshop website. Submissions in PDF (NIPS format) should be emailed to tjung at ulg.ac.be with the subject line "NIPS 2012 Workshop Submission" no later than October 3rd, 2012. The notification of acceptance will be sent out on October 7th, 2012. All accepted submissions will have the opportunity for oral presentation, and ample opportunity for discussion is integrated in the workshop. Important Dates --------------- October 3, 2012: Submission October 7, 2012: Notification December 7, 2012: NIPS Workshop (tentative) Invited Speakers ---------------- To be announced shortly. Organizers ---------- Naftali Tishby, Hebrew University, Israel Daniel Polani, University of Hertfordshire, UK Tobias Jung, University of Liege, Belgium Web --- http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~tjung/nips12workshop From fhamker at uni-muenster.de Fri Aug 31 05:54:41 2012 From: fhamker at uni-muenster.de (Fred Hamker) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:54:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Research Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Research Position in Computational Neuroscience The position is available at Chemnitz University of Technology in the Department of Computer Science. We preferably seek for a PostDoc, but PhD students might also be considered. The position is for three years, starting as soon as possible. The research position is funded from a German-Japanese Grant (DFG) in Computational Neuroscience and focuses on the function and role of Basal Ganglia pathways. We collaborate with Atsushi Nambu (National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan) and with Andrea K?hn (Charit? Berlin, Germany). The goal in our project is to elucidate the role and function of Basal Ganglia pathways by developing a detailed model of basal ganglia with respect to neural spiking dynamics, anatomical connectivity within and in between basal ganglia nuclei, as well as neural plasticity. Please see references to previous work of more abstract, functional models of Basal Ganglia pathways below. The work will include a strong interaction with our partners Atsushi Nambu, who will record from basal ganglia nuclei in monkey and with Andrea K?hn with respect to clinical applications. The ideal candidate should have prior experience in computational neuroscience and sufficient programming experience. The salary is according to German standards (E 13 TV-L), PhD (E 13 TV-L, 50%). The university is an equal opportunity employer. Women are encouraged to apply. Disabled applicants will receive priority in case they have equal qualifications. Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the state of Saxony and close to scenic mountains. Major cities nearby are Leipzig and Dresden with a rich tradition of music and culture. Applications should be sent by email (preferably in PDF format) to (fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) as soon as possible. Applications will be considered until the position is filled. Previous work on Basal Ganglia: Schroll, H, Vitay, J, Hamker, F.H. (2012) Working memory and response selection: A computational account of interactions among cortico-basal ganglio-thalamic loops. Neural Networks, 26:59-74. Vitay, J., Hamker, F. H. (2010) A computational model of the influence of basal ganglia on memory retrieval in rewarded visual memory tasks. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Volume 4, Article 13. -------------------- Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems Department of Computer Science Chemnitz University of Technology Strasse der Nationen 62 D - 09107 Chemnitz Germany Tel: +49 (0)371 531-37875 Fax: +49 (0)371 531-25739 email: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120831/f328db0b/attachment.html From alessandro.torcini at cnr.it Fri Aug 31 08:55:12 2012 From: alessandro.torcini at cnr.it (Alessandro Torcini) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:55:12 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 2 PhD positions in spike train analysis and neural network dynamics in Firenze In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Two PhD positions up to 55.000 Euro per year at Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi -- Firenze (Italy) The deadline is approaching : september 14th ================================================== http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=marie-curie-itn =================================================== The Phd positions are offered within the Marie Curie Initial Training Network - ?Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies? (NETT) to work at the Institute of Complex Systems (ISC), CNR, Florence, Italy Applications are invited for the above posts to work with Dr Alessandro Torcini and Dr Thomas Kreuz in the Computational neuroscience group at ISC, Florence. This world leading group combines theoretical investigations (e.g., on nontrivial collective phenomena in neuronal populations) with practical applications (e.g., spike train analysis). The two positions are on nonlinear dynamics/complex systems with application to neuroscience, the research lines will be 1. Emergence of collective dynamics in scale-free neuronal networks (ESR14) 2. Measures of spike train synchrony (ESR15) Gross Salary per annum: 42,028 ? (Living Allowance) plus 9,290 - 13,272 ? (Mobility Allowance) depending on circumstances Required titles: MSc in Physics, Mathematics or Engineering obtained between 14 september 2008 -- 14 september 2012 Applications: The applications should be prepared and send as detailed on this webpage: http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=how-to-apply Closing date for both positions: 14 September 2012 Both full-time posts are available from 01 January 2013 and will be offered on a fixed-term contract for a period of 36 months. Contact: Dr Thomas Kreuz (thomas.kreuz at cnr.it) or Dr Alessandro Torcini (alessandro.torcini at cnr.it) More details here: http://neuro.fi.isc.cnr.it/index.php?page=marie-curie-itn