Connectionists: NIPS workshop on Continous Attractor Neural Networks

[Si Wu]

Call for Participation: 

NIPS06 Workshop on Continuous Attractor Neural Networks

Whistler, Canada, December 8th or 9th, 2006

[The deadline for abstract submission is Nov.10, 2006]

Aim & Scope:

Continuous attractor neural networks (CANNs) are a special type of  
recurrent networks that have been studied in many neuro- and cognitive 
science areas such as modelling hypercolumns, movement generation, spatial 
navigation, working memory, population coding, attention, saccade 
initiation and decision making. They have been also applied to engineering 
problems such as robot control. Such neural field models of the 
Wilson-Cowan-Amari type, or bump models, are a fundamental type of neural 
circuitry that underlies the general mechanisms for neural systems 
encoding continuous stimuli and categorizing objects. The goal of the 
workshop is to bring together researchers from diverse areas to solidify 
the existing research on CANNs, identify important issues that need to be 
solved, and explore their potential applications to artificial learning 
systems. 

The issues (not exclusive) to be covered in the workshop include: 
1.	CANNs in different cortical areas and their function meanings.
2.	Why CANNs for neural information processing
3.	Mathematical properties and different models of CANNs
4.	How to learn CANNs in a natural noisy environment
5.	The neural and behavior signatures of CANNs
6.	CANNs for robotics and complex object representation

Program:

This one-day workshop will combine invited/survey talks, short contributed 
talks, posters, and panel discussions.

The survey talks are intended to provide a thorough background and 
overview of the field from a number of established scientists who have 
notable contributions in the field. The short contributed talks will be 
solicited through public calls, and participants will be asked to submit a 
summary of two to four pages in length outlining their research as it 
relates to the workshop theme. Papers will be accepted based on their 
quality and novel contributions to CANNs. All participants including the 
ones giving talks will have the opportunity to present in addition posters 
to further stimulate discussions between participants.

Post-workshop:

Selected participants are encouraged to submit extended papers after the 
workshop that will be peer reviewed. High quality paper in addition to the 
solicited reviews will be published in an edited book by Springer.

Invited speakers (tentative, more to be added)
.	Shun-ichi Amari (RIKEN)
.	Mark Goldam(Wellesley)
.	Hugn Wilson (York)
.	Carson Chow (NIH)
.	Kechen Zhang (John Hopkins)

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Authors should submit an extended abstract in 2-4 pages to 
siwu at sussex.ac.uk by November 10, 2006. We will send an email 
confirming the reception of the submission. The authors of the accepted 
abstracts will be allocated as talks or poster highlights. 

IMPORTANT DATES:

Oct 13:  Workshop announcement and Call for Abstracts
Nov 10:  Abstract submission deadline
Nov 15:  Notification of acceptance
Dec 8 or 9: Workshop

ORGANISERS:

Si Wu: Dept of Informatics, Sussex University, UK
Thomas Trappenberg: Dept of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Canada

For questions/ suggestions about the workshop, please feel free to contact 
siwu at sussex.ac.uk

Please refer to the workshop website: 
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/siwu/nips-workshop/CANN.html
for up-to-date information.

Dr. Si Wu
Seninor Lecturer in Neural Computation
Lab for Bioinformatics and Machine Learning
Sussex University, UK