Connectionists: Interdisciplinary College 2012

[Münster]

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the Interdisciplinary College 2012 will be held from March 16 –March 23 2012, in Guenne (Germany). Information about this event can be found at http://www.ik2012.de. This year's IK, chaired by Fred Hamker (Chemnitz Institute of Technology) and Justin London (Carleton College, USA), has a special focus theme on "Emotion and Aesthetics".

Emotion and Aesthetics have received increasing attention from researchers in the brain sciences and artificial intelligence in the last decade. Recent work has shown how emotions are an integral part of brain functioning and behavior and that aesthetic considerations influence our perception and decision making. This has led to the development of "affective science", an area which combines neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, philosophy and art to explore the influence of emotions and aesthetics on human behavior. With its focus theme on "Emotion and Aesthetics", the IK 2012 will provide an interdisciplinary view of affective science with a range of courses from cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and neural computation. Specific IK courses will address the neural correlates of emotion and aesthetics, the influence of emotions on behavior and motivation, and psychological and neurobiological approaches to music and film. There will be also courses on "affective computing", a newly developing field of methods to both understand, generate and communicate emotions in a human-machine framework, including approaches in robotics.

The Interdisciplinary College (Interdisziplinaeres Kolleg, IK), which is held every spring, offers a dense, intensive and state-of-the-art course program in neurobiology, neural computation, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and related areas. It is aimed at graduate students, postgraduates, and researchers from academia and industry. By combining the humanities, science, and technology, the IK endeavors to promote dialogue and connectedness across the various disciplines. The IK attracts about 230 participants each year (maximum load of the conference site). All courses are taught in English.

The preliminary program is appended below this email. Please note that “early bird” registration ends on January 15, 2012.

We look forward to meeting you all in Guenne!

Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker (Chemnitz Institute of Technology, Germany)
and Prof. Justin London (Carleton College, USA)

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Program IK2012
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Basic Courses

  BC1: Computational Neuroscience  (Julien Vitay, Chemnitz Institute of Technology)
  BC2: Neurobiology (Ansgar Büschges, University of Cologne)
  BC3: Artificial Intelligence (Alexandra Kirsch, TU München)
  BC4: Philosophical issues in human affectivity  (Achim Stephan and Wendy Wilutzky, University of Osnabrück)

Method Courses

  MC1: Neuroimaging (Jessica Grahn, University of Western Ontario, Canada)
  MC2: Aesthetics  (Kathleen Stock, University of Sussex, UK)
  MC3: Statistics: Significance and beyond (Peter Sedlmeier, Chemnitz Institute of Technology)
  MC4: Machine learning and neural networks (Herbert Jaeger, Jacobs University of Bremen)

Special Courses: Emotional Neuroscience

  SC1: Neural Substrates for Action Selection: The Basal Ganglia (Mark Humphries,  ENS Paris, France / University of Sheffield, UK)
  SC2: Neuroeconomics and pleasure (Oliver Hulme,  University of British Columbia, Canada)
  SC3: Emotion and Neurorobotics (Paul Verschure, University Pompeu Fabra, Spain)
  SC4: Neural Mechanisms of Emotional Attention (Patrik Vuilleumier, University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Special Courses: Psychology and Philosophy of Emotions and Aesthetics

  SC5: Music and the Brain (Manfred Spitzer, University of Ulm)
  SC6: Emotion in Music (Alexandra Lamont, Keele University, UK)
  SC7: Film and Emotion (Anne Hamker, Leipzig and Rüdiger Zill, Einstein Forum Potsdam)
  SC8: Communication of Emotions (Disa Sauter, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Special Courses: Synthetic Emotions and Robotics

  SC9: Human-Robot Interactions (Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire, UK)
  SC10: Affective Computing (Dirk Reichardt, DhBW Stuttgart)
  SC11: Social Robotics (Christian Werner Becker-Asano, University of Freiburg)
  SC12: Music Access and Interaction (Francois Pachet,  CSL Sony Paris, France)

Special Courses: General

  SC13: Digital Media (Rainer Malaka, University of Bremen)
  SC14: Computational Linguistics (Gerhard Heyer, University of Leipzig)
  SC15: Cognitive Flexibility and Basal Ganglia (Andrea Stocco, University of Washington, USA)
  SC16: Harmony of the Brain (Gerald Langner, TU Darmstadt)

Practical Courses

  PC1: Programming Autonomy (Hana Boukricha and Nhung Nguyen, University of  Bielefeld)
  PC2: Dance in the body, the mind and the brain (Bettina Bläsing, University of  Bielefeld)
  PC3: Aesthetics in Visual Perception (Gregor Hardiess, University of Tübingen)

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Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker
Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems
Department of Computer Science
Chemnitz University of Technology
Strasse der Nationen 62 
D - 09107 Chemnitz
Germany

Tel: +49 (0)371 531-37875
Fax: +49 (0)371 531-25739
email: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/

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