8th ICCNS: Call for Abstracts and Confirmed Invited Speakers

[Cynthia Bradford]

Apologies if you receive more than one copy of this announcement.


***** Call for Abstracts and Confirmed Invited Speakers *****

EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS

May 19 - 22, 2004

Boston University

677 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA
http://www.cns.bu.edu/meetings/

Sponsored by Boston University's
Center for Adaptive Systems and
Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems
with financial support from the
Office of Naval Research

This interdisciplinary conference is attended each year by approximately
people from 30 countries around the world. As in previous years, the
conference will focus on solutions to the questions:

HOW DOES THE BRAIN CONTROL BEHAVIOR?

HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY EMULATE BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE?

The conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational
neuroscience, cognitive science, neural networks, neuromorphic engineering,
and artificial intelligence. The conference includes tutorial and invited
lectures, and contributed lectures and posters, by experts on the biology
and technology of how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a
changing world. Single-track oral and poster sessions enable all presented
work to be highly visible. Three-hour poster sessions with no conflicting
events will be held on two of the conference days. Posters will be up all
day, and can also be viewed during breaks in the talk schedule.

TUTORIAL LECTURE SERIES

Stephen Grossberg (Boston University): "Linking brain to mind." See below
for details.

CONFIRMED INVITED AND PLENARY SPEAKERS

Ehud Ahissar (Weizmann Institute of Science): "Encoding and decoding of
vibrissal active touch"

John Anderson (Carnegie Mellon University): "Using fMRI to track the
components of a cognitive architecture" 

Alan D. Baddeley (University of Bristol): "In search of the episodic
buffer"

Moshe Bar (Massachusetts General Hospital): "Top-down facilitation of
visual object recognition"

Gail A. Carpenter (Boston University): "Information fusion and 
hierarchical knowledge discovery by ARTMAP neural networks"

Stephen Goldinger (Arizona State University): "Generalization gradients
in perceptual memory"

Daniel Kersten (University of Minnesota): "How does human vision resolve
ambiguity about objects?"

Stephen M. Kosslyn (Harvard University): "The imagery debate 30 years
later: Can neuroscience help resolve the issue?"

Tai-Sing Lee (Carnegie Mellon University): "Inference and prediction in
the visual cortex"

Eve Marder (Brandeis University): "Plasticity and stability in rhythmic
neuronal networks"

Bartlett W. Mel (University of Southern California): "The pyramidal
neuron: What sort of computing device?"

Miguel Nicolelis (Duke University): "Real-time computing with neural
ensembles"

Jeffrey D. Schall (Vanderbilt University): "Neural selection and control
of visual guided eye movements"

Chantal Stern (Boston University): "Sequence? What sequence? fMRI
studies of the medial temporal lobe in sequence learning"

Mriganka Sur (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): "Plasticity and
dynamics of visual cortex networks"

Joseph Z. Tsien (Princeton University): "Temporal analysis of memory
process"

William H. Warren Jr. (Brown University): "Behavioral dynamics of
locomotor path formation"

Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard Medical School): "Has "preattentive vision"
reached the end of the road?"


LINKING BRAIN TO MIND: A Tutorial Lecture Series

by Stephen Grossberg

steve at bu.edu

http://www.cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg

In 1983, Stephen Grossberg gave a week-long series of tutorial lectures
at an NSF-sponsored conference at Arizona State University. The lectures
included a self-contained introduction to principles, mechanisms, and
architectures whereby neural models link mind to brain and inspire
neuromorphic applications to technology. Many leaders of the Connectionist
Revolution which gained momentum during the mid-1980s attended the
conference. In 1990-1992, three additional tutorial lecture series were
given at the Wang Institute of Boston University.

Since 1992, major breakthroughs have occurred in the theoretical
understanding of how a brain gives rise to a mind. Models have begun to
quantitatively explain and predict the neurophysiologically recorded
dynamics of identified nerve cells, in anatomically verified circuits
and systems, and the behaviors that they control. Because these results
clarify how an intelligent system can autonomously adapt to a changing world,
they have also been used to develop biologically-inspired solutions to
technological problems.

Several research groups have asked Professor Grossberg to give another
lecture series to chart recent progress. Each morning session of the May
2004 conference will include one such tutorial lecture. The lectures will
introduce concepts, principles, and mechanisms of mind/brain modeling and
summaries of recent models about how brain development, learning, and
information processing control perception, cognition, emotion, and action
during both normal and abnormal behaviors. Brain-inspired algorithms for
solving difficult technological problems will also be described.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Session Topics:

* vision

* image understanding

* audition

* speech and language

* unsupervised learning

* supervised learning

* reinforcement and emotion

* sensory-motor control

* cognition, planning, and attention

* spatial mapping and navigation

* object recognition

* neural circuit models

* neural system models

* mathematics of neural systems

* robotics

* hybrid systems (fuzzy, evolutionary, digital)

* neuromorphic VLSI

* industrial applications

* other

Contributed abstracts must be received, in English, by January 30, 2004.
Notification of acceptance will be provided by email by February 27, 2004.
A meeting registration fee must accompany each Abstract. See Registration
Information below for details. The fee will be returned if the Abstract is
not accepted for presentation and publication in the meeting proceedings.
Registration fees of accepted Abstracts will be returned on request only
until April 16, 2004.

Each Abstract should fit on one 8.5" x 11" white page with 1" margins on all
sides in a single-spaced, single-column format with a font of 10 points or
larger, printed on one side of the page only. Fax or electronic submissions
will not be accepted. Abstract title, author name(s), affiliation(s),
mailing, and email address(es) should begin each Abstract. An accompanying
cover letter should include: Full title of Abstract; corresponding author
and presenting author name, address, telephone, fax, and email address;
requested preference for oral or poster presentation; and a first and second
choice from the topics above, including whether it is biological (B) or
technological (T) work [Example: first choice: vision (T); second choice:
neural system models (B)].

Talks will be 15 minutes long. Posters will be up for a full day. Overhead,
slide, VCR, and LCD projector facilities will be available for talks.

Abstracts which do not meet these requirements or which are submitted with
insufficient funds will be returned. Accepted Abstracts will be printed in
the conference proceedings volume. No longer paper will be required. The
original and 3 copies of each Abstract should be sent to: Cynthia Bradford,
Boston University, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, 677 Beacon
Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Early registration is recommended. To register,
please fill out the registration form below. Student registrations must be
accompanied by a letter of verification from a department chairperson or
faculty/research advisor. If accompanied by an Abstract or if paying by
check, mail to the address above. If paying by credit card, mail as above,
or fax to +1 617 353 7755, or email to cindy at bu.edu. The registration fee
will help to pay for a conference reception, 3 daily coffee breaks, and
the meeting proceedings.

STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS: Fellowships for PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows
are available to help cover meeting travel and living costs. The deadline to
apply for fellowship support is January 30, 2004. Applicants will be
notified by email by February 27, 2004. Each application should include the
applicant's CV, including name; mailing address; email address; current
student status; faculty or PhD research advisor's name, address, and email
address; relevant courses and other educational data; and a list of research
articles. A letter from the listed faculty or PhD advisor on official
institutional stationery must accompany the application and summarize how
the candidate may benefit from the meeting. Fellowship applicants who also
submit an Abstract need to include the registration fee payment with their
Abstract submission. Fellowship checks will be distributed after the
meeting.

REGISTRATION FORM

Eighth International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems
Boston University
Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems
677 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA

May 19-22, 2004

Fax: +1 617 353 7755

http://www.cns.bu.edu/meetings/

Mr/Ms/Dr/Prof:_____________________________________________________

Affiliation:_________________________________________________________

Address:__________________________________________________________

City, State, Postal Code:______________________________________________

Phone and Fax:_____________________________________________________

Email:____________________________________________________________


The registration fee includes the conference proceedings, a reception,
and 3 coffee breaks each day.

CHECK ONE:

(  ) $95 Conference (Regular)

(  ) $65 Conference (Student)

METHOD OF PAYMENT (please fax or mail):

[   ] Enclosed is a check made payable to "Boston University"
Checks must be made payable in US dollars and issued by a US correspondent
bank. Each registrant is responsible for any and all bank charges.


[   ] I wish to pay by credit card

      (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover Card only)

Name as it appears on the card:___________________________________________

Type of card: _____________________________ 

Expiration date:________________

Account number:_______________________________________________________

Signature:____________________________________________________________