Connectionists: Essex BCI-NE Webinar 18th June: Dr Michael Pereira

[Matran-Fernandez, Ana]

[cid:image001.png at 01DBDC47.6C149AC0]
https://www.linkedin.com/company/essex-bcine-lab/

The Essex BCI-NE Lab invites you to join our next monthly webinar:
Exploring subjective aspects of perceptual decision-making with intracranial recordings and computational modeling
Delivered by
Dr Michael Pereira
(Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences)

The webinar will take place over Zoom on Wednesday, 18th June 2025, at 1pm UK time
RSVP: https://www.linkedin.com/events/essexbci-newebinarspresents-drm7338509378494365698/about/

Abstract: Every day, we make decisions based on sensory input-decisions often accompanied by subjective feelings such as confidence or the vividness of the experience itself. The neural mechanisms behind these subjective states remain poorly understood, in part because they are difficult to study in animal models. In this talk, I will present work from our team that leverages clinically motivated electrode implantations in and beneath the human cortex to explore these fundamental questions in cognitive neuroscience. I will show how combining computational modeling and machine learning with neural signals-such as spiking activity and local field potentials-can help bridge the gap between theories of consciousness and empirical data.

Speaker Biography: Michael earned a Master's degree in Communication Systems from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). After two years as an engineer at Sony Deutschland GmbH, he returned to EPFL for a Ph.D. with José del R. Millán, focusing on discrete and continuous error monitoring processes in the brain. He completed a first postdoctoral fellowship at EPFL with Olaf Blanke and Ali Rezai (West Virginia University), investigating the neural correlates of perceptual consciousness. He then pursued a second postdoc with Nathan Faivre at the Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition in Grenoble, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Michael is now a scientist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), based at the Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences (GIN), where he leads the Modeling and Estimation of Subjective States Team. His research explores the neural mechanisms underlying conscious experience through computational modeling and single-neuron recordings in humans. He aims to translate this work to clinical settings, studying hallucinations and psychiatric symptoms such as pathological doubt in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Essex BCI-NE Lab webinars series takes place on the first or second Wednesday of the month over Zoom and are open to all. Speakers are invited to talk about their research for 45-50 minutes followed by Q&A.

Where speakers allow it, we record the talks and make them available to everyone on our YouTube channel. You can watch previous talks at: https://www.youtube.com/@essexbcis

Next speakers:

  *   9th July: Eduardo Santamaria Vazquez
  *   (We'll take a break in August!)
  *   10th September: Selina Wriessnegger
  *   October: Damien Coyle (TBC)

If you don't want to miss our next webinars, please email amatra at essex.ac.uk<mailto:amatra at essex.ac.uk> to ask to be added to our webinars mailing list.

Best wishes,
Ana
------------------------
Dr Ana Matran-Fernandez PhD
Lecturer in Neural Engineering and Artificial Intelligence
Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)
University of Essex
Office: 5B.539
E amatra at essex.ac.uk<mailto:amatra at essex.ac.uk>

Email notices:
1) I sometimes write emails outside (your) working hours. Please don't take this as an indication that I require an immediate response - we simply may be working at different times.
2) Because of the daily high load of emails, I may take some time to reply to you. If it's important, I may take even more time, because I want to provide an adequate response. If it's urgent, I'll try to reply quickly and maybe just with a very short email. No disrespect, just trying to be efficient - I'd understand if you did the same.



------------------------
Dr Ana Matran-Fernandez PhD
Lecturer in Neural Engineering and Artificial Intelligence
Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)
University of Essex
Office: 5B.539
E amatra at essex.ac.uk<mailto:amatra at essex.ac.uk>

Email notices:
1) I sometimes write emails outside (your) working hours. Please don't take this as an indication that I require an immediate response - we simply may be working at different times.
2) Because of the daily high load of emails, I may take some time to reply to you. If it's important, I may take even more time, because I want to provide an adequate response. If it's urgent, I'll try to reply quickly and maybe just with a very short email. No disrespect, just trying to be efficient - I'd understand if you did the same.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20250613/0728b6af/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 200685 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/pipermail/connectionists/attachments/20250613/0728b6af/attachment.png>