Connectionists: CCNC Conference: Final Notice for Registration

[Randall C. O'Reilly]

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FINAL NOTICE --- CCNC2006 REGULAR REGISTRATION RATES END NOVEMBER 6!
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2ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
                      www.ccnconference.org

To be held in conjunction with the 2006 PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY CONFERENCE,
November 16-19, 2006 at the Hilton Americas hotel in Houston, TX.

CONFERENCE DATES: Wed-Thu November 15 & 16, 2006

LOCATION: Hilton Americas Hotel, Houston, TX

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Please REGISTER through the ccnconference.org website or go directly to:

      http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=97555

at the regular rates of $75 faculty/$35 student through 6 Nov 06.  Hotel 
reservations should be made separately.

After November 6, conference registration rates will increase to $125/$50.  On 
site registration will be available, but we'd like to strongly discourage it.  
Early registration helps us get our head counts correct and keep our costs 
down. Thanks for your cooperation!
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The inaugural CCNC 2005 meeting held prior to Society for Neuroscience (SfN)
in Washington DC was a great success with approximately 250 attendees 60
presented posters and strongly positive reviews. In future years it will
continue to be held on a rotating basis with other meetings such as (tentative
list): Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) Organization for Human Brain
Mapping (OHBM) Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) Neural Information
Processing Systems (NIPS) and Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE).
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The journal Brain Research has agreed to publish selected papers from
this meeting as a dedicated section, and possibly special issue of the
journal. Presenting authors can elect to have their work considered
for this purpose. Final selections will be made by the program
committee shortly after the meeting.
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Program (Final):
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* 2006 Keynote Speakers (confirmed):
       Mike Kahana, University of Pennsylvania
       Mark Seidenberg, University of Wisconsin Madison
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* 3 Symposia (2 hours each):

  1) Face/Object Recognition: Are Faces Special, or Just a Special Case? 
     Computational models of face and object processing

      Speakers:
        Gary Cottrell, UCSD (Moderator)
        Kalanit Grill-Spector, Stanford
        Alice O'Toole, UT Dallas
        Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown

      Description: 
      What can computational models tell us about human visual object
      processing? We have excellent models that explain how we may recognize
      objects at multiple scales and orientations, while other models explain
      why faces may or may not be "special," or simply a special case. The
      goal of this symposium is to summarize what we understand with some
      degree of confidence, what is still not understood, and to what degree
      what we understand meshes with data on human and animal visual
      processing, including behavioral, fMRI, neurophysiological, and
      neuropsychological data.

  2) Semantics: Development and Brain Organization of Conceptual Knowledge:
     Computational and Experimental Investigations.

     Speakers: 
        Jay McClelland, Stanford University (Moderator)
        Linda Smith, Indiana University
        Tim Rogers, University of Wisconsin
        Alex Martin, National Institute of Mental Health 

     Description: 
     The symposium is predicated on the assumption that there are links
     between conceptual structure, experience, conceptual development, and
     brain organization of conceptual knowledge. Jay McClelland will begin
     with a computational perspective on conceptual development, followed by
     Linda Smith with an empirical perspective. We would then switch to the
     subject of brain organization of conceptual knowledge, beginning with a
     computational perspective by Tim Rogers followed by an empirical
     perspective from Alex Martin.

  3) Emergent Cognitive Control: Computational and Empirical Investigations

     Speakers:
        Mike Mozer, University of Colorado (Moderator)
        Stephen Monsell, Universityof Exeter
        Gordon Logan, Vanderbilt
        Sue Becker, McMaster

Description:
Cognitive control is required whenever an individual performs novel 
activities, either because the task is novel or because the stimuli, 
responses, or task environment is unfamiliar.  Aspects of cognitive control 
include: the deployment of visual attention, the selection of responses, and 
the use of working memory to subserve ongoing processing. The cognitive 
architecture is extremely flexible.  The role of cognitive control is to 
reconfigure this general-purpose architecture to perform a specific task. 
Cognitive control is typically conceived of in terms of an active process in 
frontal cortex which guides and routes processing in posterior systems. Even 
if the process is implemented in neural hardware, it still has the flavor of 
a homunculus---an intelligent overseer that inhibits or otherwise biases 
processing in less intelligent, subservient systems. In this symposium, we 
wish to explore alternative perspectives on cognitive control, including 
perspectives that treat control as an emergent property of a complex 
cognitive architecture, and perspectives in which control is not an explicit 
active process, but rather a consequence of the sequential dynamics of 
experience.

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* 12 short talks featuring selected posters

* Poster sessions (2)
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DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: July 1, 2006 (SPACE AVAILABLE ONLY) 

Abstracts to be submitted online via the website:
www.ccnconference.org

Like last year, there will be two categories of submissions: 
   *Poster only
   *Poster, plus short talk (15 min) to highlight the poster

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words. Women and underrepresented
minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing for posters will be
inclusive and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Short talks will
be selected on the basis of research quality relevance to conference theme and
expected accessibility in a talk format. Abstracts not selected for short
talks will still be accepted as posters as long as they meet appropriateness
criteria.

NOTIFICATION OF ACCEPTANCE: August 1, 2006

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2006 Planning Committee:

Suzanna Becker, McMaster University
Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University
Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado, Boulder
David Noelle, Vanderbilt University
Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder
Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown University Medical Center

Executive Organizer: Thomas Hazy, University of Colorado, Boulder

For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit:
                     www.ccnconference.org
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