From a.k.seth at sussex.ac.uk Fri Jun 1 13:39:54 2012 From: a.k.seth at sussex.ac.uk (Anil Seth) Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:39:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ASSC16: call for registration Message-ID: <4FC8FE6A.5070702@sussex.ac.uk> Call for registration: *ASSC16: ASSOCIATION FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS* BRIGHTON, UK, JULY 02-06 2012 www.theassc.org/conferences_assc16 www.facebook.com/assc16brighton Twitter: #ASSC16 ASSC16 is now only one month away! Register now to ensure you get your choices of events: www.theassc.org/assc16_registration . ASSC16**is the *16th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness*. It will take place in *Brighton, UK*, from *July 02-06, 2012*. The 4 day meeting (plus 1 day of tutorial sessions) brings together leading researchers in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychiatry, neurology, and computer science in a forum dedicated to showcasing and advancing rigorous scientific approaches to understanding the nature, function, and underlying mechanisms of conscious experience. Attendees are drawn from researchers, clinicians, students at all levels, as well as the interested media and public. A one-day satellite symposium on 'Neuropsychiatry and Consciousness: Bringing Consciousness Science to the Clinic' will take place on *July 7th*, at the Sussex University campus (see www.theassc.org/conferences_assc16). This event requires separate registration. ASSC16 is part what will be a true citywide celebration of consciousness science. The headline event will be a free-entry one-day public-event on consciousness science, on *June 30th*, featuring a wide range of interactive exhibits: http://www.consciousnessexpo.co.uk . Other informal events engaging both academics and the general public will take place throughout the week at various locations in Brighton. ASSC16**is organized by the *Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science* at the University of Sussex (www.sussex.ac.uk/sackler). Brighton, affectionately known as 'London by the sea' is a popular international conference destination. It is only 49 minutes by train from central London and just 30 minutes from Gatwick International Airport (LGW; there are also easy transport links from Heathrow). Brighton is a small city with conference facilities, hotels, restaurants, pubs, transport links, and the beach all within easy walking distance. ASSC16 will be held in the superb Dome and Corn Exchange theatre complex, in the heart of Brighton's artistic & cultural quarter (www.brightondome.org/). Accommodation and travel details can be found on the the main conference webpages (www.theassc.org/conferences_assc16). * * Oral and poster presentations, drawn from over 400 high-quality submissions, will complement the exciting plenary programme below. (A full programme is now available online at www.theassc.org/conferences_assc16) *Keynote speakers:* Victor Lamme (University of Amsterdam, President) Josef Perner (University of Salzburg) Geriant Rees (University College London) Tania Singer (Max Planck Institute, Leipzig) Tim Bayne (University of Oxford) Christof Koch (Caltech, Special Lecture) *Plenary symposia*: 1. /Consciousness fading: key mechanisms of anaesthesia-induced loss-of-consciousness/ Andreas Engel (Chair), Gernott Supp, Melanie Boly, Emery Brown 2. /Bringing the in-depth body to the surface: Interoception, awareness, and prediction/ Manos Tsakiris (Chair), Hugo Critchley, Jim Hopkins 3. /Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access/ Ned Block (Chair), Ilja Sligte, Jerome Sackur, James Stazicker 4. /Balancing the self: Vestibular contributions to self-consciousness/ Christophe Lopez (Chair), Bigna Lenggenhager, Gabriela Bottini *Tutorials*: 1. Heather Berlin, Nicholas Medford: /The phenomenology, neurobiology, and neurocognitive basis of depersonalization/ 2. Sue Blackmore: /Meditation and consciousness: Two ways meditation can contribute to consciousness science/ 3. Olaf Blanke, Thomas Metzinger: /Towards a comprehensive theory of subjectivity and selfhood: Philosophy, cognitive science, neurology, and neuroimaging/ 4. Axel Cleeremans, Morten Overgaard, Bert Timmermans, Ryan Scott: /Behavioural methods to assess awareness/ 5. Gustav Kuhn, Ronald Rensink: /The science of magic: Turning magic into science!/ 6. James Laban, Harutomo Hasegawa, Keyoumars Ashkan: /Neurosurgery and its role in studying consciousness/ 7. Devin Terhune: /A primer on experimental hypnosis research/ 8. Jamie Ward, Thomas Wright: /Sensory substitution/ / / Please direct any enquiries about ASSC16 to D.Schwartzman-at-sussex.ac.uk . On behalf of the local organizing committee, we look forward to welcoming you to Brighton in July! Anil Seth (programme chair) Zoltan Dienes (scientific committee chair) -- Dr. Anil Seth Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science Dept of Informatics, University of Sussex www.anilseth.com www.sussex.ac.uk/sackler -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120601/dbcf1f6b/attachment.html From jms at isep.ipp.pt Fri Jun 1 21:01:42 2012 From: jms at isep.ipp.pt (Jorge M. Santos) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 02:01:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Two Research Positions Available: Project "Reusable Deep Neural Networks: Applications to biomedical data" Message-ID: <19ec01cd405b$4624a260$d26de720$@isep.ipp.pt> Dear colleagues, Two research positions (1 Post-Doc and 1 research assistant) are available at INEB (www.ineb.up.pt), Portugal under the project "Reusable Deep Neural Networks: Applications to biomedical data". For more details please visit www.ineb.up.pt - "positions available" (internal codes NN_BPD_02_2012 and NN_BI_02_2012) or at http://www.eracareers.pt/opportunities/index.aspx?task=global&jobId=30116 and http://www.eracareers.pt/opportunities/index.aspx?task=global&jobId=30114 Best wishes Jorge Santos From gtkacik at gmail.com Sun Jun 3 18:19:13 2012 From: gtkacik at gmail.com (Gasper Tkacik) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 00:19:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Space for a few more participants still available at "Sensory Coding & Natural Environment 2012" (Austria, Sept. 2012) Message-ID: "Sensory Coding & Natural Environment 2012" has a few more spots still available for interested participants. Please see http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/program/ for the current list of invited and contributed speakers. If you would like to attend and/or present the poster, please register here: http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/registration/. Time: Sunday, Sept. 9 (afternoon) -- Wednesday, Sept. 12 (departure morning next day) Place: Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Information: http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/ Invited speakers: Dora ANGELAKI, William BIALEK, Michael BLACK, Axel BORST, David BRAINARD, Iain COUZIN, David KLEINFELD, Gilles LAURENT, Michael LEWICKI, Daniel LEE, Daniel MARGOLIASH, Bruno OLSHAUSEN, Nachum ULANOVSKY, and Jonathan VICTOR. Sensory Coding & Natural Environment is a continuation of a successful Gordon Research conference series of the same name, focused on the fields of perception, neural coding, natural scene statistics, and interaction with natural environments. This meeting has traditionally drawn together scientists at the interface of neuroscience, physics, engineering, psychology and machine learning. In addition to the interdisciplinary emphasis and the focus on searching for principles that extend across a range of sensory modalities and organisms, one of the strong points of the meeting has been to allow ample time for informal discussions. Participants are invited to present their research in poster sessions and contributed talks. See http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/ for details. Gasper TKACIK, IST Austria Matthias BETHGE, CIN & MPI Tuebingen Elad SCHNEIDMAN, Weizmann Institute From jorgedch at gmail.com Mon Jun 4 07:52:58 2012 From: jorgedch at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_D=E1vila_Chac=F3n?=) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 13:52:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop "Learning Multimodal Agents" Message-ID: ************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS The International Graduate Research Group CINACS (http://www.cinacs.org/) makes an open call for papers and presentations for a workshop to be held at the University of Hamburg: "Learning Multimodal Agents" September 7, 2012 Hamburg, Germany https://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/CINACS-2012 We aim the production of a special issue in a journal with a focus on cognition and AI, e.g. Connection Science. The workshop will be held also in Hamburg the Friday before MFI 2012 - International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Information Integration http://www.mfi-2012.org/ BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Natural systems still outperform artificial ones in most cognitive tasks. Particularly there is ample space for improvement in robot perception and motor control. A particular disadvantage of artificial systems is their primarily unimodal processing, while natural systems usually have access to several sensory modalities. In recent years brain-inspired architectures have proven to be a promising approach for closing this gap. More specifically, multisensory or cross-modal interaction is a research topic currently receiving much attention in the field of bio-inspired robotics. However, other areas such as cognitive-neuroscience, intelligent system architectures and autonomous robotics are also potential beneficiaries from this paradigm. This workshop focuses on the topics of cross-modal interactions and integration. Contributions could also be oriented to the fusion of biological, engineering or computational approaches. The creation of complementary knowledge in those fields is intended to broaden the theoretical background, and to provide fresh ideas for technical and clinical applications. TOPICS OF INTEREST - Neural network models for multimodal robotic control - Introduction of biological principles into artificial neural systems - Bioinspired generation and representation of multimodal percepts - Mechanisms for attention in the presence of multisensory information - Learning of transformations between modalities - General principles for resolving cross-modal conflicts - Cross-modal association, learning and problem-solving - Architectures suitable for cross-modal tasks - Experimental setups for multimodal research in robotics - Cognitive developmental robotics - Integration of language, vision and motor response - Learning systems for Human-Computer Interaction - Multimodal communication-learning INVITED SPEAKERS - Dr. Jindong Liu (Imperial College London) IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission: July 8, 2012 (No extension will be given) Notification of acceptance: July 23, 2012 Presentations day: September 7, 2012 PAPER SUBMISSION AND PRESENTATION The workshop is free of charge. Authors are invited to submit papers up to 6 letter size pages according to the IEEE format: http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html Papers must be submitted to the following e-mail address: davila at informatik.uni-hamburg.de At least one author of each accepted paper must give a presentation at the workshop. When submitting your manuscript, please provide the name of the author attending the event. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - Stefan Wermter (University of Hamburg) - Cornelius Weber (University of Hamburg) - Jorge Davila-Chacon (University of Hamburg) - Johannes Bauer (University of Hamburg) SPONSORSHIP This event is organized in the context of the international research group on "Cross-Modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems" (CINACS) http://www.cinacs.org/ ______________________________ University of Hamburg Department of Informatics Knowledge Technology Group Vogt Koelln Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Fax: +49 40 428 83 2515 Secretary: +49 40 428 83 2433 http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ ************************************************** -- __________________________________________________ Jorge D?vila Chac?n Research Associate Knowledge Technology Group Department of Informatics University of Hamburg Vogt Koelln Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +49 40 42883 2535 Fax: +49 40 42883 2515 E-mail:?davila at informatik.uni-hamburg.de http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~davila/ http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ __________________________________________________ From wduch at is.umk.pl Mon Jun 4 03:13:29 2012 From: wduch at is.umk.pl (Wlodzislaw Duch) Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 15:13:29 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Comments on Target Article "Cognitive Architectures and Autonomy: A Comparative Review" Message-ID: <012a01cd4221$8d2b1fa0$a7815ee0$@is.umk.pl> Call for Comments on Target Article Journal of Artificial General Intelligence (JAGI), URL http://jagi.mindmakers.org/index.php/jagi/index ) will publish a special issue based on the paper "Cognitive Architectures and Autonomy: A Comparative Review", followed by 10-15 comments and the reply of the article authors. Comments should address specific points in the article, and should not exceed two standard pages (about 8000 characters with spaces, not including author's names and affiliations). The paper may be downloaded from this address: http://jagi.mindmakers.org/index.php/jagi/index Technical requirements: please send your comments in PDF produced using the Word template provided at the http://jagi.mindmakers.org/index.php/jagi/information/authors page (RTF, or ODF formats can also be accepted as they are easily converted to DOC). To upload your comments you need to create an account and login, starting a new submission in the "Cognitive Architectures and Autonomy" section of the journal. Comments will be reviewed and selected by the editors of the special issue: Ahhwee Tan, Stan Franklin and Wlodek Duch. The deadline for sending the comments is July 15th, 2012. Thank you, Editors Prof. Wlodzislaw Duch _______________________________________________ Head, Dept of Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University SCE NTU Nanyang Visiting Professor, Singapore Google: W. Duch -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120604/0aad26a2/attachment-0001.html From alb.mazzoni at gmail.com Thu Jun 7 09:47:41 2012 From: alb.mazzoni at gmail.com (Alberto Mazzoni) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 15:47:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Computational Neuroscience at Italian Institute of Technology - Trento Message-ID: PhD studentships (including fully funded scholarships) are available in the Laboratory of Neural Computation at the Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems of the Italian Institute of Technology based in Trento, Italy. The laboratory of Neural Computation is interested in understanding how populations of neurons in the cerebral cortex encode and exchange information. The laboratory investigates these issues by developing mathematical methods for single trial analysis of neural population responses and by developing biologically plausible neural network models of cortical function and dynamics. Successful PhD candidates would be able to perform research within these topics. Further information about the laboratory can be found at: http://cncs.iit.it/research-labs/neural-computation.html For further information and enquiries please contact by email Stefano Panzeri (stefano.panzeri at iit.it) as soon as possible, attaching a CV to the email. The deadline for application is June 19th. Late applications cannot be considered. Formal applications should be submitted through the web site of the Doctoral School in Cognitive and Brain Sciences - - Specialized curriculum Cognitive Neuroscience , by following the link below http://www.unitn.it/en/ateneo/2692/announcement-selection from which the link for the online application can be found. The aforementioned PhD studentship in the Laboratory of Neural Computation falls under the area ?COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE -Computational approaches to information processing in the cerebral cortex ? within the Doctoral School call. The PhD programme is expected to start November 2012 and the PhD is normally expected to be completed in 3 years. The net salary is approximately euro 13600 per year, and there are no tuition fees. The working language of the Institute is English. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120607/e2d53538/attachment.html From bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Wed Jun 6 11:02:50 2012 From: bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:02:50 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: workshop NC^2 at DAGM in Graz Message-ID: <4FCF711A.8000004@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> Dear colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to the workshop NC^2: New Challenges in Neural Computation which will take place on August, 28th, accompanying DAGM in Graz, Austria. The workshop solicits short or long contributions connected to current problems in neural computation. It will be accompanied by a special issue in the journal Neurocomputing. For details see http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~bhammer/GINN/NC2/nc2.html -- Prof. Dr. Barbara Hammer CITEC centre of excellence Bielefeld University D-33594 Bielefeld Phone: +49 521 / 106 12115 Fax: +49 521 / 106 12181 From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Tue Jun 5 17:09:14 2012 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark A. Gluck) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 17:09:14 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEW REPRINT: Impaired Generalization of Learning in Patients with Alcohol Dependence. Message-ID: Dear colleagues, The following link http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/MattyassyAlcAlcEpub.pdf leads to an online PDF of our new paper on learning and generalization in patients with alcohol dependence, done in collaboration with our long-time collaborator in Hungary, Szabolcz Keri. Paper details are: M?tty?ssy, A., K?ri, S., Myers, C. E., Levy-Gigi, E. , Mark A. Gluck, M. A. & Kelemen, O. (2012). Impaired generalization of associative learning in latients with alcohol dependence after intermediate-term abstinence. Alcohol and Alcoholism. In Press: doi: 10.1093/alcalc/ags050 We used an associative learning task to investigate cognitive dysfunctions in alcohol dependence. This test is suitable for the assessment of stimulus-response learning and memory generalization (acquired equivalence), which is related to medial temporal lobe functioning. Methods: Twenty patients with alcohol dependence (abstinence: >6 months) and 20 matched healthy controls participated. In the task, antecedent stimuli were cartoon faces and consequent stimuli were color cartoon fishes. The task was to learn face-fish associations using feedback. In the transfer phase, the fish-face pairs were generalized to new associations. Results: There was no significant difference between patients and controls during the acquisition phase of fish-face associations. In the transfer phase, however, patients were impaired relative to controls. We found no association between task performance and intelligence. Conclusion: These results suggest that abstinent patients with alcohol dependence show marked dysfunctions in in the generalization of associations, which may indicate the dysfunction of the medial temporal lobe. Regards, Mark Gluck -- ___________________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University Phone: (973) 353-3668/3298 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Lab: http://www.gluck.edu Memory Loss & Brain Newsletter: http://www.memorylossonline.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120605/b41f901e/attachment.html From martin.giese at tuebingen.mpg.de Wed Jun 6 11:33:43 2012 From: martin.giese at tuebingen.mpg.de (Martin Giese) Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:33:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Computational Neuroscience in Tuebingen Message-ID: PHD POSITION: COMPUTATIONAL NEURAL MECHANISMS OF VISUAL ACTION PROCESSING (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Tuebingen, Germany) ============================================================= The interaction between action perception and execution 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 develop physiologically inspired, probabilistic and information-theoretical models for the visual processing of actions and its interaction with motor representations. In addition, we collaborate on the development of new experimental paradigms in humans and monkeys to identify underlying computational neural mechanisms exploiting advanced technologies from computer graphics. 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 and motor control * 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 ================================================== -------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Martin Giese Section for Computational Sensomotorics Dept. for Cognitive Neurology Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience University Clinic Tuebingen Otfried-Mueller-Str. 25 D-72076 Tuebingen GERMANY Tel.: +49 7071 29 89124 Fax: +49 7071 29 4790 Email: martin.giese at uni-tuebingen.de Web: http://www.compsens.uni-tuebingen.de/ -------------------------------------------------------- From matthias.jugel at tu-berlin.de Thu Jun 7 06:23:04 2012 From: matthias.jugel at tu-berlin.de (Matthias L. Jugel) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 12:23:04 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: BBCI Workshop 2012 on Advances in Neurotechnology, Sept 17-19, Berlin, Germany Message-ID: <3DA8F56D-EADC-4211-94D8-EF1C40AEA025@tu-berlin.de> (Feel free to send this call to your partners or peers.) ************************************************************************ Call for Participation Call for Poster Submissions BBCI Workshop 2012 on Advances in Neurotechnology September 17-19, Berlin, Germany Official: http://bbci12.ml.tu-berlin.de/ ************************************************************************ Important Dates =============== Submission Date: 2012-07-30 Notification of Acceptance: 2012-08-13 Workshop Date: 2012-09-17 - 2012-09-19 Organization ============ Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology (BFNT-B) Humboldt University Berlin (HU) Berlin Institute of Technology (TUB) Charit? - University Medicine Berlin Bernstein Center Computational Neuroscience Berlin (BCCN-B) - Benjamin Blankertz (chair), Berlin Institute of Technology - Ulrich Egert, University of Freiburg - Siamac Fazli (poster co-chair), Berlin Institute of Technology - Dario Farina, University of G?ttingen - Stefan Haufe (poster co-chair), Berlin Institute of Technology - Klaus-Robert M?ller (chair), Berlin Institute of Technology - Susanne Schreiber (co-chair), Humboldt University Berlin - Michael Tangermann (poster chair), Berlin Institute of Technology - Jochen Triesch, University of Frankfurt Matthias L. Jugel, BFNT-B/Industry Imke Weitkamp, BFNT-B/Coordination Description =========== Different approaches to Brain-Computer Interfaces have been developed, each one with specific solutions that range from understanding and explaining cognitive functions over communicating with real and virtual environments by thought alone to real-time monitoring of cognitive states. The Advances in Neurotechnology Workshop presents an overview, in-depth tutorials and discussions on the latest research at all levels of Neurotechnology and BCI research. What is presented will cover invasive recording, semi-invasive ECoG, non-invasive EEG, non-invasive NIRS and fMRI measurement and potential combinations of the different methods. Additional focus will be devoted to advances in data analysis. The poster session following the tutorials will cross over into the BBCI barbecue, smoothing discussions with drinks and food. Following the workshop there will be a summerschool on selected topics in BCI and neurotechnology from September 20th to 28th. It has educational tutorials in the morning session (two tutorials of 2h each, held by internationally renowned researchers), and practical hand-ons sessions in the afternoon. The practical sessions are partly multi-track and will allow researchers in BCI/neurotechnology to complement their expertise in the interdisciplinary field. Submission ========== Please send your posters (in PDF) or abstracts (max. 2 pages, PDF or plain text) to the poster chair Michael Tangermann , no later than 2012-07-30. Poster size should be a maximum of A0 (width x height: 841mm ? 1189mm) Confirmed Speakers ================== - Felix Biessmann, Berlin Institute of Technology - Benjamin Blankertz, Berlin Institute of Technology - Mark Cohen, UCLA - Tom Eichele, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway - Dario Farina, BFNT G?ttingen - Rainer Goebel, University Maastricht - John-Dylan Haynes, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience - Bo Hong, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China - Yukiyasu Kamitani, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto - Motoaki Kawanabe, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto - Christof Koch, California Institute of Technology - Andrea K?bler, Universit?t W?rzburg - Seong-Whan Lee, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea - Donatella Mattia, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Italy - Jos? del R. Mill?n, Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) - Klaus-Robert M?ller, Berlin Institute of Technology - Gernot M?ller-Putz, TU Graz - Gerwin Schalk, Wadsworth Center Venue ===== Audimax der Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6 / Dorotheenstr. 17-19, Berlin, Germany Workshop Fees ============= Business: 300 EUR Standard: 250 EUR * Early Registration Discount (until 2012-08-19) Academic : 200 EUR Bernstein: 100 EUR Students : 50 EUR Funding ======= The workshop is supported by the Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology Berlin. -- Matthias L. Jugel - Industry Liaison Manager Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology Fon: +49 170 226 1897, +49 30 314 78626 Fax: +49 30 314 78622 Berlin Institute of Technology Faculty IV, Machine Learning Franklinstr. 28/29, Sekr. FR 6-9 D-10587 Berlin, Germany From linsker at us.ibm.com Mon Jun 11 15:52:38 2012 From: linsker at us.ibm.com (Ralph Linsker) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:52:38 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: IBM Research: Theoretical/Computational Neuroscience research staff position Message-ID: The IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, NY) is seeking a researcher having strong interest and extensive experience in theoretical & computational neural science and brain modeling, for a Research Staff Member position. Familiarity with information theory and a strong background in statistical physics are also desirable. IBM Watson Research has a long tradition and strong presence in computational sciences and excellent computing facilities such as the BlueGene Supercomputer Center. Our current interests and expertise in computational neuroscience include: biologically realistic neuronal and network modeling, with external experimental collaboration; fMRI analysis for understanding of brain function & disease states; analysis of biological networks using statistical physics methods; and biologically-inspired deep learning using Bayesian inference and information-theoretic approaches. The successful candidate is expected to pursue independent research of world class quality in theoretical/computational neuroscience directed at understanding information processing in the brain, and to work with other IBM researchers to explore new brain-inspired computing paradigms and brain-computer interfaces. To apply, please visit https://jobs3.netmedia1.com/cp/job_summary.jsp?job_id=RES-0491538 Please contact us directly (below) if you have any questions regarding this position. The neuroscience search committee: - Yuhai Tu (yuhai at us.ibm.com) - Roger Traub (rtraub at us.ibm.com) - Ralph Linsker (linsker at us.ibm.com) - Guillermo Cecchi (gcecchi at us.ibm.com) - Mark Ritter (mritter at us.ibm.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120611/5528dfed/attachment.html From matus.uzak at gmail.com Wed Jun 13 12:23:27 2012 From: matus.uzak at gmail.com (matus.uzak@gmail.com) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:23:27 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: bnns 2.0.beta4 (Research tool for interactive training of artificial neural networks) Message-ID: Hi, I would like to announce bnns 2.0.beta4 release, [1]. bnns is a research tool for Interactive Training of Artificial Neural Networks based on the Response Function Plots visualization method. It enables users to simulate, visualize and interact in the learning process of a Multi-Layer Perceptron on tasks which have a 2D character. Tasks like the famous two-spirals task or classification of satellite image data. Most noteworthy features include: - reset, freeze and unfreeze of weight coming into a neuron - visual inspection of extrapolation performance - a set of self documented Perl scripts which assist in patterns preparation process - a Perl script to prepare bnns patterns from Boston Remote Sensing Testbed [2] data But there are many other features which enable visual analysis of NN performance, simply take a look at the manual draft. The main purpose of the project is to help students to understand the knowledge representation in ANNs and the process of it's formation with different setup of training patterns, training algorithm parameters and NN topology. And there's still time to address any comments into the project mailing list [3] to be included into the 2.0 release. Enjoy! [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/bnns/ [2] http://techlab.bu.edu/resources/data_view/boston_remote_sensing_testbed/ [3] bnns-devel at lists.sourceforge.net br, Matus Uzak From t.nowotny at sussex.ac.uk Wed Jun 13 11:43:39 2012 From: t.nowotny at sussex.ac.uk (Thomas Nowotny) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:43:39 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on neural dynamics in olfaction at CNS*2012 In-Reply-To: <4FD8B4F2.5050401@sussex.ac.uk> References: <4FD8B4F2.5050401@sussex.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4FD8B52B.5080302@sussex.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists, please plan to attend the workshop "Examining the dynamic nature of neural representations with the olfactory system" organised by Christopher L. Buckley (RIKEN), Thomas Nowotny (U. of Sussex), Taro Toyoizumi (RIKEN). 26 July 2012 as part of CNS*2012 at Atlanta/Decatur. Confirmed speakers: Maxim Bazhenov, University of California Riverside, USA Christopher L. Buckley, RIKEN Brain Institute, Japan Kevin C. Daly, West Virginia University, USA Nitin Gupta, National Institutes of Health, USA Aurel A. Lazar, Columbia University, USA Martin A. Nawrot, Freie Universit?t Berlin, Germany Thomas Nowotny, University of Sussex, UK Remus Osan, Georgia State University, USA Johannes Reisert, Monell Chemical Senses Center, USA Details, a preliminary programme and speaker abstracts are available at http://sussex.ac.uk/Users/tn41/CNS2012-Olfaction/ For inquiries please contact Chris Buckley Thomas Nowotny We are looking forward to welcoming you in Decatur. Chris Buckley Thomas Nowotny Taro Toyoizumi -- Dr. Thomas Nowotny RCUK Academic Fellow & Senior Research Fellow Phone: +44-1273-678593 CCNR, Informatics, Fax: +44-1273-877873 University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ http://sussex.ac.uk/informatics/tnowotny From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Wed Jun 13 06:31:47 2012 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:31:47 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: 3rd Call for Papers: Cognitive Computation Journal: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor Message-ID: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 3rd 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 was its Director until his death. 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 > -- CODAM model of 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 "S.I.: > 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/20120613/4dc5dfa2/attachment-0001.html From pascal.hitzler at wright.edu Fri Jun 15 16:20:34 2012 From: pascal.hitzler at wright.edu (Pascal Hitzler) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:20:34 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation: Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning Workshop NeSy@AAAI'12 In-Reply-To: <201206151426.q5FEQaII009086@DSX4000-4.tagadab.com> References: <201206151426.q5FEQaII009086@DSX4000-4.tagadab.com> Message-ID: <4FDB9912.8020009@wright.edu> The Eighth International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning will take place on July 2012 at AAAI-12, with an exciting programme which includes a keynote by Jude Shavlik: http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy12/ If you're planning to attend AAAI, please register for the workshop before the June 22 late registration deadline. We're looking forward to seeing you in Toronto. Artur Garcez Pascal Hitzler Luis Lamb -- Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH pascal at pascal-hitzler.de http://www.knoesis.org/pascal/ Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net From weng at cse.msu.edu Fri Jun 15 18:59:24 2012 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2012 08:59:24 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Brain-Mind Magazine Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2012 In-Reply-To: <4FDB221E.8040005@cse.msu.edu> References: <4FDB221E.8040005@cse.msu.edu> Message-ID: <4FDBBE4C.4040708@cse.msu.edu> Brain-Mind Magazine Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2012 http://www.brain-mind-magazine.org/ Table of Contents Start a Different Kind of Magazine 1 by /Juyang Weng / Brain-Mind Institute: For Future Leaders of Brain-Mind Research 2 Open Letter to the US President Obama: Is the US Foreign Policy Scientifically Shortsighted? banner 3 - 4 by /Juyang Weng / *Abstract: *All minds are groupish and shortsighted in nature. The aftermath of Richard Nixon's China visit demonstrated that a scientifically correct foreign policy is to make friends with foes, counter intuitive to many souls. Our brains blinded us. Scientific principles, e.g., checks-and-balances of government power, seem more convincing and effective in converting foes than shallow and ideological slogans like "human rights". *Index terms: *brain, science of mind, foreign policy Brain Stories 1: Naivety in Everybody banner 5 - 6 by /Brian N. Huang / *Abstract: *Meant for layman readers, this series uses real world stories to explain how a single brain works computationally inside its skull and how multiple brains work together to give rise to group intelligence. Hopefully, this series is useful for us humans to see the weakness of our current governing systems, in developed countries and developing countries alike, and how a country can develop earlier and better. It also explains some key mechanisms to make a robot learn skills that its human programmer does not have. This installment is about naivety, in childhood and adulthood; in you and in your officials. Brains are naive for various tasks, making strategic errors with high costs. This installment raises a few nation-scale naiveties to be discussed in future installments of this series. *Index terms: *brain, mind, law, group intelligence Problem Solving to Problem Posing banner 7 - 8 by /Yoonsuck Choe /and/Timothy A. Mann / *Abstract: *Artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches are both very good at problem solving. However, the various methods accumulated in these fields have not been able to give us truly autonomous agents. The main shortcoming is that the problems themselves are formulated by human designers and subsequently fed to the problem solving or learning algorithms. The algorithms do not question the validity of the problems nor do they formulate new problems. This latter task is called "problem posing", and is in fact an active area in education research. In this article, we will discuss the importance and relevance of problem posing to autonomous intelligence and speculate on key ingredients for effective problem posing in an AI and machine learning context. *Index terms: *problem posing, education, artificial intelligence Why Should the CVPR Community See that Output Is Not Only Output? banner 9 - 10 by /Christopher S. Masfis / *Abstract: *The currently prevailing methods in the computer vision and pattern recognition (CVPR) community require images for system training. Many of such methods require manually drawn object contours to segment the pixels from each object of interest from those pixels in other parts of the image. Does a human child require such object-contour annotation to learn how to detect, recognize, and segment objects from cluttered natural scenes? Weng argued for a negative answer. He explained that a brain autonomously learns directly from its physical environment using not only non-annotated continuous video of dynamic and cluttered scenes, but also its video-synchronized actions --- output is also input. Body-environment interactions give rise to brain representations. In particular, contour annotation is not necessary for a brain, neither for a machine. *Index terms: *pattern recognition, computer vision, brain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120615/2c431d07/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 59339 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120615/2c431d07/attachment-0004.jpe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 43588 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120615/2c431d07/attachment-0005.jpe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 59597 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120615/2c431d07/attachment-0006.jpe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 65301 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120615/2c431d07/attachment-0007.jpe From terry at salk.edu Fri Jun 15 21:51:15 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:51:15 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - July, 2012 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 24, Number 7 - July 1, 2012 Article Causality, Conditional Independence and Graphical Separation in Settable Systems Halbert White and Karim Chalak Letters Dynamic State and Parameter Estimation Applied to Neuromorphic Systems Emre Ozgur Neftci, Bryan Toth, Giacomo Indiveri and Henry D. I. Abarbanel Neural Information Processing With Feedback Modulations Si Wu and Wenhao Zhang Identification of Directed Influence: Granger Causality, ]Kullback-Leibler Divergence and Complexity Abd-Krim Seghouane and Shun-ichi Amari Fisher and Shannon Information in Finite Neural Populations Peggy Series, Stuart Yarrowc and Edward A.L. Challis Variation in the Local Motion Statistics of Real-life Optic Flow Scenes Szonya Durant and Johannes M Zanker A Computational Feed-forward Model Predicts Categorization of Masked Emotional Body Language for Longer, but Not for Shorter Latencies Beatrice de Gelder, Bernard M.C. Stienen and Konrad Schindler Simple Deterministically Constructed Cycle Reservoirs With Regular Jumps Ali Rodan and Peter Tino Multiple Kernel Learning With Gaussianity Measure Hideitsu Hino, Nima Reyhanic and Noboru Murata Conditional Association Sohan Seth A Neuro-computational Approach to PP Attachment Ambiguity Resolution Kailash Nadhc. and Christian R. Huyck Improved Generative Semisupervised Learning Based on Fine-Grained Component-Conditional Class Labeling David J Miller, Jayaram Raghuram, George Kesidis and Christopher M. Collins ----- 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 brandon.s.minnery at ugov.gov Thu Jun 21 17:01:45 2012 From: brandon.s.minnery at ugov.gov (Brandon S Minnery) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:01:45 +0000 (GMT+00:00) Subject: Connectionists: funding opportunity: Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems In-Reply-To: <2075997537.254556.1340311933687.JavaMail.root@linzimmb03o.imo.intelink.gov> Message-ID: <940813089.254625.1340312505295.JavaMail.root@linzimmb03o.imo.intelink.gov> Greetings, ? The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity ( www.iarpa.gov ) will host a Proposers' Day for the Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems (KRNS) Program on July 12, 2012, in anticipation of the release of a new solicitation in support of the program. The Proposers' Day will be held from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The purpose of the event will be to provide information on KRNS, to address questions from potential proposers, and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities and find potential team partners. More information on the KRNS program can be found at: http://www.iarpa.gov/solicitation_krns.html ? Best Regards, Brad Minnery, Ph.D. IARPA Program Manager -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120621/a9af53ff/attachment.html From compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de Wed Jun 20 04:02:40 2012 From: compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de (Compsens) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:02:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PHD POSITION: COMPUTATIONAL NEURAL MECHANISMS OF VISUAL ACTION PROCESSING (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Tuebingen, Germany) Message-ID: <20120620100240.48906d8ez0advf6o@webmail.uni-tuebingen.de> PHD POSITION: COMPUTATIONAL NEURAL MECHANISMS OF VISUAL ACTION PROCESSING (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Tuebingen, Germany) ============================================================= The interaction between action perception and execution 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 develop physiologically inspired, probabilistic and information-theoretical models for the visual processing of actions and its interaction with motor representations. In addition, we collaborate on the development of new experimental paradigms in humans and monkeys to identify underlying computational neural mechanisms exploiting advanced technologies from computer graphics. 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 and motor control * 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 ================================================== -------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Martin Giese Section for Computational Sensomotorics Dept. for Cognitive Neurology Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience University Clinic Tuebingen Otfried-Mueller-Str. 25 D-72076 Tuebingen GERMANY Tel.: +49 7071 29 89124 Fax: +49 7071 29 4790 Email: martin.giese at uni-tuebingen.de Web: http://www.compsens.uni-tuebingen.de/ -------------------------------------------------------- From kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Wed Jun 20 05:33:02 2012 From: kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Janina Kirsch) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 11:33:02 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: LAST Call for applications ----- BCF/NWG-Course: Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology, Freiburg, Germany References: <001401cb0d47$5fc842b0$1f58c810$@uni-freiburg.de> <000801cbf531$223d33b0$66b79b10$@uni-freiburg.de> <003d01cc2f55$dc5511b0$94ff3510$@uni-freiburg.de> Message-ID: <000e01cd4ec7$b0a4a110$11ede330$@uni-freiburg.de> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% BCF/NWG-Course: Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology %% %% October 7-12, 2012 %% %% Application deadline: June 30, 2012 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Aim of the course %% The course is intended to provide advanced Diploma/Masters and PhD students, as well as young researchers from the neurosciences with approaches for the analysis of electrophysiological data and the theoretical concepts behind them. http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/events/conferences-workshops/20121007-nwgcourse The course includes various topics such as ? Neuron models and spike train statistics ? Point processes and correlation measures ? Systems and signals ? Local field potentials and synaptic plasticity The course will consist of lectures in the morning and and matching exercises using Matlab and Mathematica. Experience with these software packages will be helpful but is not required for registration. The participants should have a basic understanding of scientific programming. This course is designated especially for advanced diploma/M.Sc.-students and PhD-students (preferentially in their first year). %% Faculty %% ? Dr. Stefan Rotter, Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg ? Dr. Sonja Gruen, Research Center J?lich ? Dr. Ad Aertsen, Neurobiology & Biophysics, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg ? Dr. Ulrich Egert, Biomicrotechnology, Department of Microsystems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Freiburg %% Application %% Please apply by sending an email containing your CV and a meaningfull letter of motivation to nwg-course at bcf.uni-freiburg.de The course is limited to 20 participants. Course fees: NWG members: 50 Euro others: 125 Euro %% Course venue %% Bernstein Center Freiburg, Lecture Hall and Computerlab (ground floor), Hansastr. 9a, 79104 Freiburg, Germany http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/contact/findus %% Contact %% Dr. Janina Kirsch, Bernstein Center Freiburg Germany Tel: +49 761 203 9575 Fax: +49 761 203 9559 Email: nwg-course at bcf.uni-freiburg.de From salah at boun.edu.tr Wed Jun 20 11:23:28 2012 From: salah at boun.edu.tr (salah@boun.edu.tr) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:23:28 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: 3rd Int. Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU'2012) at IROS 2012 Message-ID: <1340205808.4fe1eaf0763fb@webmail.boun.edu.tr> -------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Papers: 3rd Int. Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU'2012) to be held in conjunction with IROS'2012, 7 October, Algarve, Portugal http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/hbu/2012/ - apologies for cross posting - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Short Description: The Third Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding, organized as a satellite to IROS'2012, will gather researchers dealing with the problem of computational modeling and understanding of human behavior under its multiple facets (expression of emotions, display of relational attitudes, performance of individual or joint actions, imitation, etc.), with particular attention to implications in robotics, including additional resource and robustness constraints of robotic platforms, social aspects of human-robot interaction, and developmental approaches to robotics. The HBU Workshops, previously organized as satellite to ICPR and AMI Conferences, have a unique aspect of fostering cross-pollination of different disciplines, bringing together researchers of robotics, HCI, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, interaction design, ambient intelligence, psychology. The diversity of human behavior, the richness of multi-modal data that arises from its analysis, and the multitude of applications that demand rapid progress in this area ensure that the HBU Workshops provide a timely and relevant discussion and dissemination platform. Topics: The covered topics include, among others: Autonomous mental development Behavioral biometrics Benchmarking studies on novel databases Facial, gestural and voice-based affect recognition for robotics Human motion analysis and action recognition Human-robot interaction Imitation learning (learning from demonstration) Mathematical description and integration of contextual information New feature selection and extraction methods Novel sensors (e.g. RGB-D cameras) Pattern discovery Robots and smart environments Sign-language recognition Social behavior analysis & modeling, multimodal behavior patterns Temporal patterns Submissions: Submissions must represent original material. Papers are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has been neither submitted to, nor published in, another journal or conference. All manuscripts will undergo a rigorous review process by the members of the program committee. The submissions will be up to 12 pages, Lecture Notes in Computer Science style. The proceedings of HBU 2010 and HBU 2011 were published as a book in Springer Verlag's LNCS Series. LNCS approval is pending for HBU 2012. Submission and reviewing are handled via the EasyChair system. You can submit a paper now at: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=hbu2012 Important Dates: 1 July 2012: Submission deadline for full papers 25 July 2012: Notification of acceptance 7 August 2012: Camera-ready paper 7 October: Full day Workshop at IROS’12 Invited Keynotes: Fran?ois Bremond (INRIA), "Scene Understanding and Assisted Living" Erol Sahin (METU), "Affordances and Concepts" Committees: Organizing Committee: Albert Ali Salah, Bogazici University, Turkey. Javier Ruiz-del-Solar, Universidad de Chile, Chile. Cetin Mericli, Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, INRIA, France. Program Committee: Levent Akin, Bogazici University, Turkey. Brenna Argall, Northwestern University, USA. Kai Arras, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany. Sven Behnke, University Bonn, Germany. Tony Belpaeme, University of Plymouth, UK. Fran?ois Bremond, INRIA, France. Ginevra Castellano, University Birmingham, UK. Kerstin Dautenhahn, University Hertfordshire, UK. Ozlem Durmaz Incel, Bogazici University, Turkey. Vanessa Evers, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Ian Fasel, University of Arizona, USA. Michael Goodrich, Brigham Young University, USA. Verena Hafner, Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany Luca Iocchi, Roma University, Italy. Hatice Kose, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. Ben Krose, University of Amsterdam & Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Manuel Lopes, INRIA, France. Tekin Meri?li, Bogazici University, Turkey. Yukie Nagai, Osaka University, Japan. Mark Neerincx, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Catherine Pelachaud, TELECOM-ParisTech, France. Dennis Reidsma, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Erol Sahin, Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Komei Sugiura, NICT, Japan. Leila Takayama, Willow Garage, USA. Adriana Tapus, ENSTA-ParisTech, France. Tijn van der Zant, University Groningen, The Netherlands. Manuela Veloso, Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Rodrigo Verschae, AMTC-Chile, Chile. Juan Wachs, Purdue University, USA. Zeynep Yucel, ATR, Japan. From aurel at ee.columbia.edu Fri Jun 22 05:40:53 2012 From: aurel at ee.columbia.edu (Aurel A. Lazar) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 05:40:53 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Methods of System Identification for Studying Information Processing in Sensory Systems Message-ID: <7C7304C3-998B-480F-821F-648E66717264@ee.columbia.edu> Dear all, please plan to attend the workshop entitled: "Methods of System Identification for Studying Information Processing in Sensory Systems" organized by Aurel A. Lazar (Columbia University) and Mikko I. Juusola (University of Sheffield) on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 as part of CNS*2012, Atlanta/Decatur, GA Confirmed speakers: Theodore W. Berger, University of Southern California Vladimir Brezina, Mount Sinai School of Medicine Daniel Coca, University of Sheffield Fabrizio Gabbiani, Baylor College of Medicine. Mikko I. Juusola, University of Sheffield Aurel A. Lazar, Columbia University. Matthieu Louis, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona Shy Shoham, Technion Garrett B. Stanley, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University A preliminary program and speaker abstracts are available at http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu/workshops/cns/methods12/identification12.html Aurel http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu/ From c.hilgetag at gmail.com Fri Jun 22 11:17:50 2012 From: c.hilgetag at gmail.com (Claus C Hilgetag) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:17:50 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Extended registration deadline: Symposium on Complex Systems and Brain Networks References: <13FB1DC2-C52C-42F4-8C4D-08B42B2288E3@googlemail.com> Message-ID: <10CA84AB-4B46-4D00-9BF8-3D373734C1E8@gmail.com> EXTENDED DEADLINE for symposium registration "COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND BRAIN NETWORKS" Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Delmenhorst, Germany, 13-15 Sept 2012 Extended deadline for registration is the 29th of June, 2012. This interdisciplinary symposium is devoted to discussing novel approaches of complex brain network analyses and their clinical applications. Topics include: 1. Physical models of brain dynamics 2. New approaches for analyzing and modelling complex brain systems 3. Brain networks in clinical applications Date: September 13 - 15, 2012 Venue: Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Lehmkuhlenbusch 4 27753 Delmenhorst Germany Organizers: Dr. Carsten Giessing Carl von Ossietzky Universit?t Oldenburg, Germany Prof. Dr. Claus Hilgetag Universit?tsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany Apart from the invited speakers, we accept a limited number (30) of further participants. During the meeting, participants will have the opportunity to present a poster in one of the poster sessions. Applications from participants who plan to actively contribute to the meeting in such a way will be given higher preference. Extended deadline for registration is the 29th of June, 2012. Please check one of the following links for registration: http://www.h-w-k.de/index.php?id=1793 or http://www.staff.uni-oldenburg.de/carsten.giessing/symposium.html See you in September! Carsten Giessing and Claus Hilgetag -- || Claus C. Hilgetag, PhD || Professor & Director | Dept. of Computational Neuroscience || University Medical Center Eppendorf | Hamburg University || www.uke.uni-hamburg.de/icns || Adjunct Associate Professor | Boston University ---- Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity. From dianne.masson at glasgow.ac.uk Fri Jun 22 09:54:15 2012 From: dianne.masson at glasgow.ac.uk (Dianne Masson) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:54:15 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Research Associate vacancy at Glasgow University Message-ID: <00da01cd507e$82c0fec0$8842fc40$@glasgow.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists We have a vacancy for a Research Associate for 3 years. The post is to contribute to a project entitled "Neural synchrony in neuropsychiatry and brain development". Specifically, the job requires the analysis of existing MEG-data sets, data-acquisition and implementation of novel analytic tools, contributing to the design and programming of MEG experiments, recruiting and running the participants, assisting in analysing the results, and participating in the writing up of the results. For further details and to apply please go to the job page: http://www.gla.ac.uk/about/jobs/ and click on 'current vacancies' this will take you to a search page where you should add reference number 002148. This will give details of the job description and how to apply for the post. Kind regards Dianne **************************************************************************** *** Dianne Masson Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology/School of Psychology University of Glasgow 58 Hillhead Street Glasgow G12 8QB Tel: +44 (0)141 330 3608 Web: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/ The University of Glasgow, Charity No SC004401 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120622/18b34cdd/attachment.html From rod.rinkus at gmail.com Fri Jun 22 08:29:43 2012 From: rod.rinkus at gmail.com (Rod Rinkus) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 08:29:43 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: new paper proposing that sparse distributed codes instantiates quantum computing Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, I have a new paper, "Quantum Computing via Sparse Distributed Representation", in the journal, NeuroQuantology, which may be of interest to many of you. The link is: http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/507 Abstract: Quantum superposition states that any physical system simultaneously exists in all of its possible states, the number of which is exponential in the number of entities composing the system. The strength of presence of each possible state in the superposition?i.e., the probability with which it would be observed if measured?is represented by its probability amplitude coefficient. The assumption that these coefficients must be represented physically disjointly from each other, i.e., localistically, is nearly universal in the quantum theory/computing literature. Alternatively, these coefficients can be represented using sparse distributed representations (SDR), wherein each coefficient is represented by a small subset of an overall population of representational units and the subsets can overlap. Specifically, I consider an SDR model in which the overall population consists of Q clusters, each having K binary units, so that each coefficient is represented by a set of Q units, one per cluster. Thus, K^Q coefficients can be represented with KQ units. We can then consider the particular world state, X, whose coefficient?s representation, R(X), is the set of Q units active at time t to have the maximal probability and the probabilities of all other states, Y, to correspond to the size of the intersection of R(Y) and R(X). Thus, R(X) simultaneously serves both as the representation of the particular state, X, and as a probability distribution over all states. Thus, set intersection may be used to classically implement quantum superposition. If algorithms exist for which the time it takes to store (learn) new representations and to find the closest-matching stored representation (probabilistic inference) remains constant as additional representations are stored, this would meet the criterion of quantum computing. Such algorithms, based on SDR, have already been described. They achieve this "quantum speed-up" with no new esoteric technology, and in fact, on a single-processor, classical (Von Neumann) computer. Sincerely, Rod Rinkus -- Gerard (Rod) Rinkus, PhD President, Neurithmic Systems 468 Waltham St Newton, MA 02468 617-997-6272 Visiting Scientist, Lisman Lab Volen Center for Complex Systems Brandeis University, Waltham, MA grinkus at brandeis dot edu http://people.brandeis.edu/~grinkus/ From badjoby at gmail.com Sat Jun 23 11:43:39 2012 From: badjoby at gmail.com (Joby Joseph) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:13:39 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Computational neuroscience workshop Message-ID: Applications are invited for IBRO-UNESCO Interregional School on Computational and Theoretical Neuroscience Bridging Concept - data gap University of Hyderabad Hyderabad, India December 5 to 21, 2012 *Students pursuing any neuroscience related area, and interested in doing research are encouraged to apply. * PhD students; early career post-docs; outstanding science honors or final year masters, or engineering students are eligible. For more details on the program and speakers see the website below http://schools.ibro.info/Pub/Pub_Main_Display.asp?LC_Docs_ID=5558 Joby Joseph Reader Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences University of Hyderabad, India Ph: +918008531777 Fax: +914023134493 Alt email: jjcncs at uohyd.ernet.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120623/a1a32f84/attachment.html From Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com Sun Jun 24 00:02:12 2012 From: Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com (Eugene Izhikevich) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:02:12 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Brain Corporation Jobs: Neuroscience of motor control Message-ID: <770C5F42-842B-4191-9EA9-63926FC3BEDB@braincorporation.com> Multiple full-time positions are available immediately in modeling of sensorimotor control at Brain Corporation, San Diego, CA. Submit your CV/resume and relevant papers to Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich [jobs AT braincorporation.com]. In your cover letter, please address the following requirements. REQUIREMENTS: We are seeking candidates who are exceptionally good in any two of the following three areas: (1) modeling and simulation of sensorimotor processing, reinforcement learning, action selection, or motor control; (2) solid experience in spiking networks, spike-timing dynamics, and STDP; (3) excellent programming skills in C/C++, PYTHON or MATLAB. Of interest are candidates with substantial experience in constructing and simulating internal models and motor primitives; in modeling locomotion, reaching and grasping; in modeling biological vision for navigation and control; in modeling the oculomotor system, proprioceptive system, brainstem and spinal cord, locomotor CPG, cerebellum, basal ganglia, or motor cortex. The employee compensation package includes stock options, matching 401k retirement contributions, and annual performance-based bonuses. -- Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich Chairman & CEO Brain Corporation San Diego, California http://www.braincorporation.com http://izhikevich.org/Google_Scholar From aurel at ee.columbia.edu Mon Jun 25 05:39:14 2012 From: aurel at ee.columbia.edu (Aurel A. Lazar) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:39:14 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, please plan to attend the workshop entitled: "Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience" on Wednesday and Thursday, July 25-26, 2012 as part of CNS*2012, Atlanta/Decatur, GA Standing Committee Alex G. Dimitrov, Washington State University - Vancouver. Aurel A. Lazar, Columbia University. Program Committee Todd P. Coleman, University of California, San Diego Michael C. Gastpar, EPFL and UC Berkeley Conor Houghton, Trinity College Dublin Simon R. Schultz, Imperial College Tatyana O. Sharpee, Salk Institute Confirmed speakers: Bruno B. Averbeck, NIMH/NIH Marius Buibas, Brain Corporation Alex G. Dimitrov, Washington State University - Vancouver Gaute T. Einevoll, Norwegian University of Life Sciences Conor Houghton, Trinity College Dublin Ehud Kaplan, Mount Sinai School of Medicine Sanggyun Kim, University of California, San Diego William B. Levy, University of Virginia Ilya Nemenman, Emory University Christopher J. Rozell, Georgia Institute of Technology Tatyana O. Sharpee, Salk Institute Jianing Shi, Rice University Gabriel A. Silva, University of California, San Diego Rava Azeredo da Silveira, Ecole Normale Superieure Robert Sinclair, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology A preliminary program and speaker abstracts are available at http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu/workshops/cns/methods12/information12.html Aurel http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu/ From marcel.van.gerven at gmail.com Mon Jun 25 14:01:55 2012 From: marcel.van.gerven at gmail.com (Marcel van Gerven) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:01:55 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Position `Connectivity based Prediction of Cognitive and Motor Function' Message-ID: <3374D90B-1531-432A-8731-C96050583512@gmail.com> PhD Position `Connectivity based Prediction of Cognitive and Motor Function' Job description In the project you will develop a new framework for predicting changes in cognitive and motor function based on diffusion imaging and resting-state fMRI data. The framework relies on state-of-the-art statistical methods in connectivity analysis developed by our group and will be applied to large clinical datasets which have been acquired at the neurology department. This research promises to improve early diagnosis of Parkinsonism and Alzheimer's disease and can have profound impact on clinical neuroscience in an aging society. Requirements You should be highly motivated and have a Master?s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience, Physics, Computer Science or a related field of study. The ideal candidate has excellent math and programming skills and a clear interest in cognitive and/or clinical neuroscience. Experience with Matlab, data analysis, machine learning and/or magnetic resonance imaging would be highly appreciated. You should have a demonstrable interest in and qualification for scientific research, be able to work in an interdisciplinary team in an international context, and have excellent writing skills in English. Conditions of employment - you will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years; - starting date: as soon as possible; - you will be classified as a PhD student (promovendus) in the Dutch university job-ranking system (UFO); - the gross starting salary amounts to ? 2,042 per month based on full-time employment, and will increase to ? 2,612 per month in the fourth year, based on a 38-hour working week. Please note that all PhD students at the Donders Centre for Cognition have a 0.9 FTE research and 0.1 FTE teaching appointment. Organisation Radboud University Nijmegen Strategically located in Europe, Radboud University Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. A place with a personal touch, where top-flight education and research take place on a beautiful green campus in modern buildings with state-of-art facilities. Department Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Faculty of Social Sciences The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour consists of three research centres: the Centre for Cognition, the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and the Centre for Neuroscience. The Donders Institute focuses on state-of-the-art cognitive neuroscience using a multidisciplinary approach, and offers excellent lab and neuroimaging facilities, PhD supervision and courses, and technical support. The project is embedded within the Donders research theme Brain Networks and Neuronal Commmunication and will be supervised by Dr van Gerven's research group. The clinical work will be conducted in collaboration with Prof. Roy Kessels and Dr Frank-Erik de Leeuw. The DCC is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences, one of the largest faculties at Radboud University Nijmegen. The faculty hosts high-quality research and study programmes that rank among the best in the Netherlands. www.ru.nl/ www.ru.nl/socialsciences/ www.ru.nl/donders/graduate-school/donders-graduate/ Applications Applications will be handled in order of arrival and the opening will close once a suitable candidate has been found. Please send your application to m.vangerven at donders.ru.nl --- Marcel A. J. van Gerven, PhD | Assistant Professor Department of Artificial Intelligence | Donders Centre for Cognition Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour | Radboud University Nijmegen Room B.02.04 | Montessorilaan 3 | 6525 HR Nijmegen P.O. Box 9104 | 6500 HE Nijmegen T. +31 (0)24 36 15606 | F. +31 (0)24 36 52728 www.distrep.org | m.vangerven at donders.ru.nl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120625/03a7ddef/attachment.html From david at nld.ds.mpg.de Mon Jun 25 18:56:37 2012 From: david at nld.ds.mpg.de (David Hofmann) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:56:37 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Computational_Neuroscience_Course_G?= =?utf-8?q?=C3=B6ttingen_2012?= Message-ID: <4FE8ECA5.50703@nld.ds.mpg.de> Applications are invited for the tenth summer course on COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE in G?ttingen, Germany September 03rd - 07th, 2012 organized by David Hofmann Agostina Palmigiano Maximilian Puelma-Touzel The course is intended to provide graduate students and young researchers from all parts of neuroscience with working knowledge of theoretical and computational methods in neuroscience and to acquaint them with recent developments in this field. The course includes tutorials and lectures of the following researchers: * Susanne Schreiber, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany * Surya Ganguli, Stanford University, USA * Adrienne Fairhall, University of Washington, USA * Matthias Bethge, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany * last speaker coming soon - visit our homepage (see below) The course takes place at the Department of Nonlinear Dynamics of the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, G?ttingen. A course fee of 100 Euro includes participation in the tutorials, study materials, and part of the social events. The number of participants is limited to 30. Course language is English. To apply please fill out the application form at: http://www.bccn-goettingen.de/events/cns-course by *August 6, 2012* Best wishes and looking forward to seeing you in G?ttingen David Hofmann -- David Hofmann Phone: +49-(0)551-5176-417 Mobile: +49-(0)176-28275472 Homepage: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/119797.html Max Planck Institut for Dynamics and Self-Organization Department for Nonlinear Dynamics Am Fa?berg 17, 37077 G?ttingen From raoul.huys at univ-amu.fr Mon Jun 25 15:41:58 2012 From: raoul.huys at univ-amu.fr (raoul huys) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:41:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD vacancy Message-ID: <201E5171-9F96-450B-B993-788E8683A290@univ-amu.fr> Dear sir, madame, I would like to ask you if you could distribute the PhD vacancy below through the mailing list. Kind regards, Raoul Huys CR1 CNRS Institut de Neurosciences des Syst?mes Inserm UMR1106 Aix-Marseille Universit? Facult? de M?decine 27 Boulevard Jean Moulin 13005 Marseille, France Project Title: Timing mechanisms: Behavioral, Muscular, and Neurophysiological Dynamics Abstract The correct timing of human movement is at the core of successful coordination with a complex and changing environment. We propose to study human (motor) timing mechanisms and their neural implementation from a dynamical approach. Lately, the novel phase-flow perspective enabled us to find evidence for the existence of different motor control and timing mechanisms in a series of movement tasks (Huys et al., 2008b; 2010b; 2010a). In the absence of spatial task requirements, movement pace dictates which mechanism is used. While two mechanisms directly map onto distinct, unambiguously defined dynamical classes, empirical data provide evidence for the utilization of a third class. It is yet unknown, however, neither how the distinct motor control mechanisms are neurally implemented nor what the impact of environment and movement-generated feedback is. The aim of the present proposal is to (i) rigorously investigate the hypothesized third mechanism, (ii) study the (three) mechanisms? neural implementation (via the electroencephalogram; EEG), and (iii) disentangle the movements? generative component versus the informational (feedback) component (in the EEG). Thereto, we propose a research project focusing on behavioral experiments including motor perturbations and simultaneous EMG and EEG recording. If successful, we will establish the link between (abstract) low-dimensional motor-behavioral classes, muscular electromyography patterns, and their emergence from high-dimensional neural network dynamics. Academic context The ?Ecole Doctorale 463 Sciences du Mouvement Humain? (Doctoral School 463 Human Movement Sciences) organizes this year?s PhD competition on July 11th and 12th 2012. One out of multiple PhD candidates will be awarded. Applications should be received July 1st 2012 the latest. If awarded, the PhD will be housed at the ?Institute de Neurosciences des Syst?mes? (INSERM UMR1106; http://ins.medecine.univmed.fr/) at the la Timone campus in Marseille (France), supervised by Viktor Jirsa and Raoul Huys. Project requirements ? Programming skills (preferentially Matlab or Python) ? Background in the Human Movement Sciences or Behavioral Neurosciences (preferentially) ? (Multivariate) time-series analysis skills ? Basic knowledge of Dynamical Systems Theory (minimally) For further information, please contact Raoul Huys (email: mailto:raoul.huys at univ-amu.fr). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120625/16abf2cb/attachment-0001.html From Franklin.Chang at liverpool.ac.uk Tue Jun 26 01:13:48 2012 From: Franklin.Chang at liverpool.ac.uk (Franklin Chang) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 06:13:48 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Computational modeling of child language acquisition postdoc Message-ID: Postdoctoral Research Associate (Computational Modelling: Child Language Acquisition) 31,020 pounds per year Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Institute of Psychology, Health and Society University of Liverpool Ref: R-577723/WWW Closing date for receipt of applications: 1 August 2012 You will join a child language modeling project, led by Dr Franklin Chang. The project will involve the development of a connectionist model of syntax acquisition that will be fit to range of acquisition phenomena (e.g., grammaticality judgments, preferential looking, elicited production). You will be responsible for programming and analyzing a neural network of syntax acquisition. You should have a PhD in psychology, computer science or a closely related field and have an interest in connectionist models and syntactic development. ?Experience with programming languages like python, Java, R, or related languages is desirable. The post is available for 2 years, commencing 1 October 2012. Further information can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/sentenceproductionmodel/news Please direct any informal enquiries regarding the modelling to Franklin Chang -? franklin.chang [at] liverpool.ac.uk - and regarding the research project more generally to Ben Ambridge - ben.ambridge [at] liverpool.ac.uk From christian.faubel at ini.ruhr-uni-bochum.de Tue Jun 26 06:20:38 2012 From: christian.faubel at ini.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (christian faubel) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:20:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Summer School Neuronal Dynamics for Cognitive Robotics September 3-7, 2012 Message-ID: <4FE98CF6.6070906@ini.ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Summer School Neuronal Dynamics for Cognitive Robotics September 3-7, 2012 Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany Institute for Neural Computation http://robotics-school.org/ Neuronal dynamics provide a powerful theoretical language for the design and modelling of embodied and situated cognitive systems. The school is aimed at advanced undergraduate or graduate students, postdocs and faculty members in embodied cognition, cognitive science and robotics. A limited number of scholarships is available from sponsoring by the EU COG III network. Scope This summer school gives a hands-on introduction to neuronal dynamics ideas and will enable participants to become pro- ductive within this framework. Participants will develop and implement small experimental projects on their own to establish a link to their re- search interest. Topics Neural attractor dynamics, Dynamic Field Theory, neuronal representations, navigation behavior, artificial perception, learning mechanisms, implementation issues To apply, please send a CV and a short cover letter with background and motivation to gregor.schoener at rub.de by July 1, 2012. -- Dr. Christian Faubel | Office: Nb02/71 Institut f?r Neuroinformatik | Tel: +49 234 3224231 Theory of cognitive systems | FAX: +49 234 3214209 Ruhr-University Bochum | 44780 Bochum GERMANY | -------------------------------------------------------- From dianne.masson at glasgow.ac.uk Tue Jun 26 12:56:11 2012 From: dianne.masson at glasgow.ac.uk (Dianne Masson) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 17:56:11 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Research Associate vacancy for three years at Glasgow University Message-ID: <010601cd53bc$96e9e380$c4bdaa80$@glasgow.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists We have further funding for a Research Associate post for 3 years. The post is to contribute to a project entitled "Conscious perception: An approach synthesizing cortical network modelling, information processing and causal intervention". Specifically, the job requires a review of current literature in relevant fields, development of stimuli and experimental procedures, contributing to the design and programming of the behavioural, MEG and TMS experiments, recruiting and running the participants, assisting in analysing the results, and participating in the writing up of the results. For further details and to apply please go to the job page: http://www.gla.ac.uk/about/jobs/ and click on 'current vacancies' this will take you to a search page where you should add reference number M00483. This will give details of the job description and how to apply for the post. Kind regards Dianne **************************************************************************** *** Dianne Masson School of Psychology/Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology University of Glasgow 58 Hillhead Street Glasgow G12 8QB Tel: +44 (0)141 330 3608 Web: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/ The University of Glasgow, Charity No SC004401 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120626/43c7a124/attachment.html From benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de Fri Jun 29 07:34:32 2012 From: benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de (Benjamin Lindner) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:34:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Doctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience at BCCN Berlin, Germany Message-ID: <4FED92C8.5040407@physik.hu-berlin.de> (apologies for cross-postings) Applications are invited for a three-year post-doctoral position in the group of Prof. Lindner (Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics) at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin starting in October 2012.?? The aim of the project is the analysis of the nonlinear response properties of spiking model neurons and their consequences for the neural activity and signal transmission in recurrent neural networks. Theoretical insights achieved by analytical calculations and numerical simulations will also be applied to the analysis and interpretation of experimental data.? The successful candidate should have a strong interest in the analysis of the dynamics of single neurons and neural networks. A background in theoretical physics, nonlinear dynamics and/or the theory of stochastic processes is advantageous although not obligatory. The position will also entail the collaboration with colleagues from experimental neuroscience as well as the co-supervision of PhD and Master students. ?? Applications, including a letter of motivation, a CV, and a list of three potential referees should be sent by email to ??benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de ? (cc to nikola.schrenk at bccn-berlin.de)?? Prof. Dr. B. Lindner? Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin? Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience? Institut f?r Physik? Sitz: Philippstr. 13, Haus 2? 10115 Berlin? Postanschrift: Unter den Linden 6 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120629/f8ec55b1/attachment.html From raphael.ritz at incf.org Thu Jun 28 10:20:07 2012 From: raphael.ritz at incf.org (Raphael Ritz) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:20:07 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: INCF Short Course: "An Introduction to Neuroinformatics" Message-ID: <4FEC6817.70008@incf.org> [sorry if you receive this through multiple channels] INCF Short Course "An Introduction to Neuroinformatics" September 7-8, 2012, in Munich, Germany Application Deadline: August 15, 2012 Organized by INCF -- Website: http://course2012.incf.org AIM One of the goals of the INCF is to contribute to the training of future neuroinformaticians. To help to fulfill its goals INCF is offering a two-day course that provides an introduction to and overview of a wide range of topics within neuroinformatics by leading experts in the field. It is suitable for researchers in neuroscience as well as the computational sciences who wish to develop interests in neuroinformatics. TOPICS COVERED - data analysis and neuronal coding - databases and ontologies - multi-scale modeling - neuroengineering - simulation/computation/workflows - clinical applications - visualization SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE - David Willshaw (Edinburgh,UK) - Maryann Martone (San Diego,USA) - Upi Bhalla (Bangalore, India) - Tobi Delbr?ck (Z?rich, Switzerland) - Marc-Oliver Gewaltig (Lausanne, Switzerland) - Peter Tass (J?lich, Germany) - JB Poline (Paris, France) - Ignacio Arganda (Cambridge, USA) - Gaute Einevoll (?s, Norway) WHO SHOULD GO The course will be suitable for neuroscience researchers wishing to develop interests in neuroinformatics as well as informatics researchers with a strong interest in neuroscience. A prerequisite for attending the course is a basic knowledge of neuroscience. The course is open to advanced students and postdoctoral researchers as well as faculty members. The course is limited to 50 participants. VENUE Technische Universit?t M?nchen Arcisstra?e 21 80333 M?nchen, Germany https://maps.google.com/maps?q=48.1498438002,11.5677801592&spn=0.005,0.005&t=k FINANCIAL There will be a fee of 40 ? (British Pounds), payable on registration. This fee covers course materials, refreshments during the course and attendance at a dinner on Friday evening. Financial support will be available to students to cover the registration fee and as a contribution to travel and accommodation costs. APPLICATION Please apply by sending an email to course-admin at incf.org containing a brief CV and one page statement of why you wish to attend this course. Students who wish to apply for financial support should include an extra document giving the costs for which they wish to apply and a statement from their university that they are a student. Early application is advised as early applications will have priority. Applications will be considered and a decision made as soon as they are received. The deadline for application is August 15 or when the course is filled - whichever comes first. If you have any questions about this event please contact the course administration at course-admin at incf.org. -- Dr. Raphael Ritz Scientific Officer International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Karolinska Institutet Nobels v?g 15 A SE-171 77 Stockholm Sweden Email: raphael.ritz at incf.org Phone: +46 8 524 87017 Fax: +46 8 524 87150 web: www.incf.org From michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be Fri Jun 29 03:43:28 2012 From: michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be (Michel Verleysen) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:43:28 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ESANN 2013: call for special sessions Message-ID: <01b401cd55ca$df8f2ef0$9ead8cd0$@uclouvain.be> ESANN 2013: European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges, Belgium, 24-25-26 April 2013 http://www.esann.org Call for special sessions ------------------------------- ESANN 2013 builds upon a successful series of conferences organized each year since 1993. ESANN has become a major scientific event in the machine learning, computational intelligence and artificial neural networks fields over the years. Each year, 5-6 special sessions on selected hot topics in the field are organized at ESANN. We are currently looking for proposals to organize special sessions. Candidate organizers are invited to read the call for special sessions at http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=cfss. The other pages of the ESANN website will be updated in the next few weeks; currently they still contain information about ESANN 2012. Candidates for the organization of special sessions should send an e-mail to esann at uclouvain.be at the latest on July 31 (but sooner is better!) Details are available from http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=cfss. The conference will be organized in Bruges, one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Europe. Designated as the "Venice of the North", the city has preserved all the charms of the medieval heritage. Its centre, which is inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list, is in itself a real open air museum. We remain of course at your disposal for any information about ESANN 2013 and the organization of special sessions. Sincerely yours, Michel Verleysen ======================================================== ESANN - European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann * For submissions of papers, reviews, registrations: Michel Verleysen Univ. Cath. de Louvain - Machine Learning Group 3, pl. du Levant - B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve - Belgium tel: +32 10 47 25 51 - fax: + 32 10 47 25 98 mailto:esann at uclouvain.be * Conference secretariat d-side conference services 24 av. L. Mommaerts - B-1140 Evere - Belgium tel: + 32 2 730 06 11 - fax: + 32 2 730 06 00 mailto:esann at uclouvain.be ======================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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