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Events

Today (17 MAY 2022)
11:30
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13:00

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Webinar

Essential Skills and Requirements Every Graduate Student Needs

Professor Jonathan Ashmore - Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology University College London


17 MAY 2022
11:30 - 13:00

Event Link :
https://join.skype.com/Neq7oL9ixMQy


More Info: http://scs.ipm.ac.ir/new/docs/ashmore.jpeg
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Upcoming
Past
6
MAR
2022

School of Cognitive Sciences

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IPM SCS Webinar

Image synthesis for simulators using generative models

Saeed Saadatnejadd (EFPL)


6 MAR 2022
16:00 - 18:00

IPM SCS Webinar

Abstract:


A powerful simulator highly decreases the need for real-world tests when training and evaluating autonomous vehicles. Data-driven simulators flourished with the recent advancement of conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs), providing high-fidelity images. The main challenge is synthesizing photorealistic images while following given constraints. In this work, we propose to improve the quality of generated images by rethinking the discriminator architecture. The focus is on the class of problems where images are generated given semantic inputs, such as scene segmentation maps or human body poses. We build on successful cGAN models to propose a new semantically-aware discriminator that better guides the generator. We aim to learn a shared latent representation that encodes enough information to jointly do semantic segmentation, content reconstruction, along with a coarse-to-fine grained adversarial reasoning. The achieved improvements are generic and simple enough to be applied to any architecture of conditional image synthesis. We demonstrate the strength of our method on the scene, building, and human synthesis tasks across three different datasets. The code is available https://github.com/vita-epfl/SemDisc

More Info: http://scs.ipm.ac.ir/talk.jsp

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2
FEB
2022

School of Cognitive Sciences

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IPM Webinar - Brain controllability: mirage or reality?

Dr. Michele Allegra, Department of Physics and Astronomy "Galileo Galilei" and Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Italy


2 FEB 2022
15:30 - 17:00

Description :


A major goal of applied neuroscience is to understand how to achieve controlled perturbations of brain activity through stimulation or brain-computer interfaces. This aim is particularly appealing for medical applications, where one wishes to restore normal activity patterns in subjects affected by neurological or psychiatric disorders. In recent years, several authors have proposed to frame this problem within control theory, a well established engineering paradigm dealing with the control of dynamical systems. In this framework, a model of the autonomous (uncontrolled) dynamics of the system is used to precisely devise external interventions that, in combination with the autonomous dynamics, will steer the system towards desired targets. In a seminal work, Gu et al. (Nature communications 6.1 (2015)) proposed to use a linear model of macroscopic brain dynamics and apply the simple theory of linear controllability, arguing that external modulation of a single brain region might be sufficient to to steer the brain towards an arbitrarily chosen activity state - a finding that raised a large interest in this research topic. Several subsequent works, however, highlighted significant theoretical and practical limitations of this approach, suggesting that initial enthusiasm may have been overly optimistic. In this seminar, we build on previous criticism and our recent investigations to further clarify the main problems with the current approach to brain controllability. We will argue that, contrary to several statements in the literature, controlling whole-brain activity by locally perturbing one or even a few regions is, for all practical purposes, unfeasible. Finally, we shall briefly discuss possible alternative frameworks to achieve controlled manipulations of global brain activity.

zoom meeting link

https://unipd.zoom.us/j/7963138515

More Info:

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26
JAN
2022

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Online Seminar - Visual perception of social relationship

Liuba Papeo - Institut des Sciences Cognitives—Marc Jeannerod, UMR5229 ,Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) & Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1


26 JAN 2022
16:30 - 18:00

Description :


The social function of human vision appears clear from the highly specialized mechanisms for face and body perception. Here, I address the social function of vision with respect to the representation of human groups and their relationships.
I will present a set of behavioral, fMRI and EEG studies addressing how the representation of social interaction emerges from object perception, through the analysis of spatial relations between multiple faces and bodies in visual scenes.
First, I will discuss new behavioral phenomena suggesting that human vision encodes socially relevant spatial relations between people (i.e., bodies) with the same efficiency and high specialization of face perception. Second, I will discuss how a network of visual brain areas may give rise to the earliest rudimentary representation of social interaction, based on the mere physical structure of the input, before inferential processes kick in.

liuba papeo is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/98088293888?pwd=SW1lclY4bUpkS1U2TXhJSjlyRUEvdz09

Meeting ID: 980 8829 3888
Passcode: EDU0uy

More Info:

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5
JAN
2022

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Online Seminar - Spontaneous activity, memory replay, and the default mode network

Dr. Majid Mohajerani, Associate Professor, University of Lethbridge


5 JAN 2022
17:30 - 19:00

Description :


Spontaneous activity accounts for most of what the brain does and is likely to be key for information processing in the brain, but its function is still quite mysterious. Two key spontaneous activity processes are the Default Mode Network (DMN), a set of areas that are most markedly connected and active during behavioural idleness, and memory replay, the spontaneous reactivation of neural patterns occurring during experience. In the Mohajerani lab, we test the hypothesis that the DMN plays a key role in memory replay processes. This theory, if confirmed, would bring important conceptual advances: to memory studies, as it would provide a mechanism supporting the formation and consolidation of complex memory representations. I will explore this theory by our ongoing studies of neural activity over the whole mouse cortex in animals running memory tasks.

This talk will be held online via Zoom:
https://uleth.zoom.us/j/93943183315



More Info:

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22
DEC
2021

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Online Seminar - How fast are responses to “is it funny” and “is it strange” questions?

Alessio Toraldo, Associate Professor at University of Pavia, Italy


22 DEC 2021
16:00 - 17:30

Description :


We aimed at investigating humor empirically by applying a cognitive-psychology approach, thus focusing on a specific humor task. Thirty-two participants listened to 30 jokes intermixed with 30 non-jokes that had an implausible ending, and decided whether or not each stimulus was funny (Humor Decision Task, HDT). In a control task, 30 plausible stories and 30 stories with an implausible ending were intermixed and participants decided whether or not each stimulus was “strange” (Implausibility Decision Task, IDT). Response times (RT) on correct responses indicated that the two tasks involve different cognitive operations: while “funny” responses were 256 ms faster than “not-funny” responses, “strange” responses took the same time as “not-strange” ones. IDT results could be explained by assuming that participants used the degree of semantic overlap between the setup and the ending of the story to select a response. As for HDT, we had two different cognitive accounts, the “recognition” and the “sequential attempts” hypotheses. On the former, participants activate long-term-memory (LTM) abstract representations of the jokes’ semantic structures; on the latter, participants use a trial-and-error strategy to solve the puzzle posed by a punchline that is not already available in LTM. RT on incorrect responses favoured the “sequential attempts” hypothesis.

This talk will be held online via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82378722348

More Info:

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15
DEC
2021

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Online Seminar - Functional architecture of cerebral cortex during naturalistic movie-watching

Reza Rajimehr , University of Cambridge , MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit


15 DEC 2021
18:00 - 19:30

Description :


Characterizing the functional organization of cerebral cortex is a fundamental step in understanding how different kinds of information are processed in the brain. Monumental efforts over the past decades have uncovered the function of many cortical areas in response to selected stimulus categories. However, it is still unclear how cortical areas are organized during naturalistic vision and audition. Here we used high-resolution functional MRI data from 176 human subjects to map the macro-architecture of entire cerebral cortex based on responses to a 60-minute audiovisual movie stimulus. A data-driven clustering approach revealed a map of 24 functional areas/networks, each related to a specific aspect of sensory or cognitive processing. The map included three distinct executive control (domain-general) networks which showed a strong push-pull interaction with domain-specific regions in visual, auditory, and language cortex. The cortical parcellation scheme presented here provides a comprehensive and unified map of functionally defined areas, which could replace a large set of functional localizer maps.

This talk will be held online via Zoom:
https://mit.zoom.us/j/2750118580
Meeting ID: 275 011 8580

More Info:

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24
NOV
2021

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Online Seminar - Ecological perspectives on the neural machinery for communication and cooperation

Dr. Samuel Nastase , Princeton University


24 NOV 2021
16:30 - 18:00

Description :


ECognitive neuroscientists are trained to use clever experimental manipulations to decompose complex cognitive phenomena—like language—into simpler, more manageable components. Drawing on parallels with machine learning and evolutionary biology, I advocate for a complementary approach that puts ecological considerations at the forefront. To make this more concrete, I provide two examples of this approach from my own work. First, I introduce the "Narratives" data collection—a well-curated community benchmark dataset comprising over 800 naturalistic fMRI scans acquired while participants listened to a variety of spoken narratives. I'll touch on some recent results emerging from this dataset using deep language models to capture brain activity during narrative comprehension. Second, I briefly discuss ongoing work using deep neural networks as "model organisms" for understanding brain-to-brain coupling and cooperative behavior in an artificial gameplay ecosystem.

This talk will be held online via zoom:
https://princeton.zoom.us/j/4961416066

More Info:

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8
NOV
2021

School of Cognitive Sciences

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Seminar - Integrated Cognitive Assessment for Timely Diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease

Dr. Seyed Mahdi Khaligh Razavi , Royan Institute


8 NOV 2021
10:00 - 11:30

Description :


Early detection and monitoring of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients are key to tackling dementia and providing benefits to patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and society. Digital biomarkers can help identify and monitor subtle cognitive changes in individuals at risk of developing dementia. Furthermore, such tests are able to benefit from advanced analytics for more accurate and personalised results. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being increasingly used for applications in Dementia research. We developed the Integrated Cognitive Assessment (ICA) which is a 5-min, self-administered, computerised cognitive assessment tool based on a rapid categorisation task. The ICA is innately independent of language and culture, and can generalise across populations without the need for collection of population-specific normative data. ICA has received CE approval for use in Europe and is cleared by FDA for use in the US. After more than 28 years of symptom therapy in AD, new disease modifying therapies are becoming available which are only effective in early stages of the disease. This further emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis, and highlights the benefits of emerging technologies such as ICA a practical solution to the significant and urgent problem of timely dementia diagnosis.

* I will give a brief summary of Cognetivity's journey so far and walk you through some of the key findings from our research publications and clinical investigations.

This talk will be held online via Zoom:
https://cognetivity.zoom.us/j/83779096845?pwd=YSt3S2FVSHAzRG05a2NpQysyN2VkZz09

Meeting ID: 837 7909 6845
Passcode: 702459


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News

IPM

Call for Talk or Workshop at IPM

School of Cognitive Sciences would like to invite interested researchers and educators to submit their proposals to the SCS office via this Form .

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6th Iranian Symposium on Brain Mapping Updates

ISBM 2022

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PhD Admission 1401 in Cognitive Neuroscience (brilliant talent)

PhD Admission

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PhD Admission 1401 in Cognitive Neuroscience

Admission of PhD student in Cognitive Sciences 1401

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Postdoc Position

Postdoctoral Researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience

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Neural Data Analysis - Second Stage

IPM Neural Data Analysis - Second Stage 1400

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