Connectionists: Workshop on brain stimulation for neuro-prosthetic applications

[David Rotermund]

We would like to invite you to participate in our excellence workshop
"Naturalistic integration of information from external stimulation into
ongoing neuronal activities of the brain".
It will take place October 20-23, 2016 at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg
in Delmenhorst (near Bremen), Germany.

The invited main speakers are Costas Anastassiou, Sliman Bensmaia,
Anythony N. Burkitt, Ilka Diester, Jannis Hildebrandt, Eduardo Fernandez
Jover, Andreas Kreiter, Kristine Krug, Walter Lang, Mikhail A. Lebedev,
Thomas Lenarz, Hubert H Lim, Tobias Moser, Klaus Obermayer, Ramesh
Rajan, Christopher J. Rozell, Mohamad Sawan, Alessandro Vato, Günther
Zeck, Eberhart Zrenner.
A preliminary program can be found under
http://www.nncn.de/en/news/events/11th-bernstein-sparks-workshop


As you might know quite well from your own experience, it is a huge
problem to interface with the brain and to successfully introduce
artificial, meaningful signals into on-going neural information
processing. On the other hand, exciting possibilities in medical and
fundamental research are waiting to be explored and to be realized. This
workshop will address major challenges in this field:


* Ideas and technologies for improving functional neuro-prostheses.
Besides presenting general advances, we will specifically focus on
artificial vision and hearing, and on building better prosthetic limbs
providing touch sensation feedback

* Using causal interference with neural processing as a tool for
understanding how the brain works and processes information

* Establishing stimulation protocols and designing algorithms for
providing external information with dynamics matching spatio-temporal
activation patterns observed under 'normal' conditions, encoded in a
format that the brain can 'understand'.


Our workshop will bring together experimentalists, technologists,
medical scientists, and theoreticians who are the experts in getting
meaningful signals into neuronal circuits actively engaged in
information processing. The workshop will provide a platform allowing
you to present your work and to have discussions with other researchers
(especially from other disciplines, who use different methods or work on
other areas of the brain) about putative solutions for solving this puzzle.


Besides the talks of the main speakers with plenty of time for
discussions there will be a poster session. Participation in the
workshop will be limited to about 60 attendees (20 main speakers, 40
postdocs + PhD students) on a first come first serve basis. In case you
are interested in participating, we would ask you to send your reply to
_<mailto:ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de>ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de_. In
order to cover all costs, may we ask for a registration fee in the
amount of € 60,00 (€ 40,00 for Bernstein members) for PhD students and €
120,00 (€ 80,00 for Bernstein members) for postdocs/professors. You will
understand that we cannot cover your costs for accommodation and travelling.


The meeting is part of the "Bernstein Sparks Workshops series" and will
be supported and partly financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG) and the Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS) of the Bernstein
Network Computational Neuroscience. Further support and financing is
provided by the "Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study"
( http://www.h-w-k.de/index.php?id=2213 ).

Yours sincerely

Udo Ernst and David Rotermund

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