Connectionists: Kosice Neuroscience Workshop April 20-24

Thu Mar 26 06:48:37 EDT 2015

The Second Workshop and Lecture Series on

*/"Cognitive neuroscience of auditory and cross-modal perception"/*

20 - 24 April 2015

Kosice, Slovakia

http://pcl.upjs.sk/

*Objectives:*

This workshop and lecture series will include introductory lectures and 
advanced research talks on a range of topics related to the */neural 
processes of auditory, visual and cross-modal perception/*.

The talks will illustrate the */multidisciplinary character of cognitive 
neuroscience research/*, covering behavioral, neuroimaging, and modeling 
approaches, as well as applications of the research in auditory 
prosthetic devices.

The workshop is aimed at */early-stage and advanced students and young 
researchers/*, and it will provide ample opportunities for direct 
interactions between the lecturers and the attendees.

      Themes

Spatial hearing, vision and crossmodal perception, neural modeling, 
methods in cognitive neuroscience: behavioral experiments, EEG and fMRI 
imaging, modeling, applications: cochlear implants, hearing aids.

*Format*

Lectures 20 - 22 April, Consultations 23 – 24 April

*Venue*

Historicka aula, P. J. Safarik University, Srobarova 2, 040 11 Kosice, 
Slovakia

*Organizers*

Norbert Kopco, PhD. (norbert.kopco at upjs.sk <mailto:norbert.kopco at upjs.sk>)

Frederick Gallun, PhD. (Frederick.Gallun at va.gov 
<mailto:Frederick.Gallun at va.gov>)

*Organizing team and contact*

Beata Tomoriova, Lubos Hladek, Perception and Cognition Lab 
<http://pcl.upjs.sk>,**kogneuro at gmail.com <mailto:kogneuro at gmail.com>

      Program overview

Lectures, talks, posters:

Mon, Tue, Wed: 8:30 – 12:00, 13:30 – 16:05 expert lectures, 16:05 – 
17:00: contributed posters & presentations

Plenary lecture and panel discussion:

Wed: 17:30-19:00 in Zlaty Dukat hotel

Consultations:

  * Thu: 8:30 – 11:30 Individual consultations with experts (by
    appointment) and work on assignments, 12:00 – 17:00 individual work
    on assignments
    (8:30 – 11:30 alternatively, interested participants can attend the
    Symposium on university spin-offs and start-up companies
    <http://pcl.ics.upjs.sk/symposium2015/>)
  * Fri: 8:30 – 11:30 Individual consultations with experts (by
    appointment) and work on assignments

      Plenary lecture and panel discussion

*Virginia Best, Frederick Gallun, and Norbert Kopco*“Audibility and 
spatial hearing”

      Speakers and lecture topics

*Simon Carlile*(University of Sydney)
Lecture 1: Active listening: Speech intelligibility in cocktail party 
listening.
Lecture 2: Listening in motion

*Pierre Divenyi*(Stanford University)
Lecture 1: Toward an evolutionary theory of speech: how and why did it 
develop the way it did.
Lecture 2: What is the cost of simultaneously listening to the “what” 
and the “when” in speech?

**

*Christopher Stecker *(Vanderbilt University)
Lecture 1: RESTART theory: discrete sampling of binaural information 
during envelope fluctuations is a fundamental constraint on binaural 
processing.
Lecture 2: Neuroimaging of task-dependent spatial processing in human 
auditory cortex.
Assignment 1: Psychophysical exploration of binaural cues synchronized 
to envelope fluctuations: testing the RESTART theory with synthetic and 
naturalistic sounds. (hackathon type assignment)
Assignment 2: Analysis of an fMRI data set combining task and binaural 
manipulations in a factorial manner.

**

*Bernhard Laback*(Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Lecture 1: Sound Localization Cues and Perceptual Grouping in Electric 
Hearing
Lecture 2: Temporal effects in the perception of interaural time 
differences: Data and model predictions
Assignment: Acoustic simulation of cochlear implant perception with 
low-frequency residual hearing

**

*Volker Hohmann *(University of Oldenburg)
Lecture 1: Modeling Auditory Scene Analysis by multidimensional 
statistical filtering
Lecture 2: Modeling Cocktail Party Processing in a Multitalker Mixture 
using Harmonicity and Binaural Features
Assignment: Implementation of a statistical estimator (particle filter) 
that tracks a (simulated) pitch track partially masked by noise.

**

*Arash Yazdanbakhsh*(Boston University)
Lecture 1: Pursuit eye movements and perceived object velocity, 
potential clinical applications.
Lecture 2: Visuospatial memory and where eyes look when the percept changes.
Assignment: A simulation assignment to replicate the gain of eye pursuit 
in following a target.

**

*Aaron Seitz*(University of California, Riverside)
Lecture 1: Perceptual Learning; specificity, transfer and how learning 
is a distributed process
Lecture 2: Brain Training; How to train cognition to yield transfer to 
real world contexts

**

*Frederick (Erick) Gallun *(US Dept. of Veterans Affairs and Oregon 
Health & Science University)
Lecture 1: Learning From Nature’s Experiments: What Clinical Research 
Can Mean for Sensory Scientists
Lecture 2: Auditory Processing After mild Traumatic Brain Injury: New 
Findings and Next Steps
Assignment: Establishing normative ranges of performance using 
non-linear functions

**

*Istvan Winkler*(Hungarian Academy of Science)
Lecture 1: Auditory processing capabilities supporting communication in 
preverbal infants
Lecture 2: Modeling auditory stream segregation by predictive processes

**

*Virginia Best*(Boston University)
Lecture 1: Spatial Hearing: Effect of hearing loss and hearing aids.
Assignment: MATLAB assignment: simulating the effect of hearing loss on 
spatial cues

**

*Petr Maršálek*(Charles University in Prague)
Lecture 1: Coincidence detection in the MSO – computational approaches
Lecture 2: On the single neuron computation

      Travel, accommodation, visitor information

/Travel: /The Kosice Airport <http://www.airportkosice.sk/en/>is served 
by Austrian Airlines <http://www.austrian.com/>and Czech Airlines 
<http://www.csa.cz>(via Vienna, Prague, Bratislava) and by low-cost 
airline Wizzair <http://wizzair.com/en-GB/Search>(London Luton Airport). 
Alternatively you can fly to Budapest and take a 3.5-hr shuttle bus to 
Kosice (for example, using the cassoviaexpres 
<http://cassoviaexpres.sk/en/>shuttle bus company). From Krakow you can 
take the 4-hr shuttle bus operated by Airtrans.sk 
<http://airtrans.sk/en/>. More information about how to get to Kosice 
(also by train or bus) can be found here 
<http://www.visitkosice.eu/en/to-get-there/arriving-to-the-city>.//

/Accommodation:/A conference rate of 50EUR/night+(1.5e local tax) has 
been negotiated with the Zlaty dukat 
<http://www.zlatydukat.sk/index.php?lang=en>hotel. Please, make your 
reservation by contacting the hotel directly, either through their 
website or by emailing the hotel at hotel at hotelzlatydukat.sk and mention 
the “Cognitive Neuroscience Workshop” to get the rate. Otherwise, there 
are several hotels close to the workshop venue, for example Hotel 
Teledom <http://www.hotelteledom.sk>, Villa Regia 
<http://villaregia.sk/en/>, Doubletree by Hilton 
<http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/hotels/slovak-republic/doubletree-by-hilton-hotel-kosice-KSCDTDI/index.html>, 
Hotel Yasmin <http://www.hotel-yasmin.sk/>, Hotel Maraton 
<http://www.hotelmaraton.sk/>(for more hotel options please see 
http://www.booking.com, http://www.hotels.com, for hostels see: 
http://www.hostels.com, http://www.hostelworld.com)

//

/Visitor information and current events:/Košice was one of the European 
Capitals of Culture in 2013 
<http://www.visitkosice.eu/en/things-to-see-and-do/sightseeing-in-kosice/traces-of-ecoc-kosice-2013>. 
For the list of new cultural venues and current events there, see 
http://k13.sk/(in Slovak). For all events and trip ideas see 
http://www.visitkosice.eu/, http://www.slovaktours.eu/, 
http://www.mickosice.sk/ <http://www.mickosice.sk/index.php?lang=eng>, 
http://slovakia.travel/, or http://www.slovakia.com/

//

      Registration

The workshop is open to all interested students/scientists. Registration 
is free of charge but required (mostly for organizational reasons). In 
order to register, please send an email to kogneuro at gmail.com stating 
your name and affiliation, dates on which you are planning to attend. In 
case you would like to have a presentation please send us an abstract 
(up to 200 words) and an indication whether you prefer poster or oral 
presentation no later than April 10, 2015.

      Related event

Workshop attendees might also be interested in an independent Symposium 
on university spin-offs and start-up companies 
<http://pcl.ics.upjs.sk/symposium2015/>that will take place on 23 April 
2015.

      Last year’s website

http://pcl.upjs.sk/workshop2014/

      Funding

This workshop / lecture series is organized within the Project 
implementation: SOFOS – knowledge and skill development of the academic 
staff and students at the University of Pavol Jozef Safarik in Kosice 
with emphasis on interdisciplinary competencies and integration into 
international research centres, ITMS: 26110230088, supported by the 
Research & Development Operational Programme funded by the ESF. Modern 
education for knowledge society / This project is being co-financed by 
the European Union

-- 
doc. Norbert Kopco, Ph.D.
Assoc Professor / Senior Researcher:
Inst of Computer Sci, Faculty of Science, Safarik Univ, Kosice, Slovakia
Adjunct: Ctr for Computational Neurosci (CompNet), Boston University &
Martinos Ctr for Biomed Imaging, Harvard Med School - Mass Gen Hospital
P: +16175759556 F: +14847279884, kopco at bu.edu, http://cns.bu.edu/~kopco

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20150326/793182a0/attachment.html>