Thorsten Kahnt, Ph.D.Chief, Learning and Decision-Making UnitNational Institute on Drug Abuse Orbitofrontal contributions to outcome-guided behavior Research across species has shown that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is critical for decision making. However, it is less clear what exactly the OFC is contributing to this function. I will present work using functional neuroimaging showing that the […]
Robbe Goris, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology University of Texas at Austin Title: Inference and introspection in the primate visual system To accomplish goals, humans and other animals must infer properties of theenvironment in the face of uncertainty and change. I will discuss psychophysical, physiological,and theoretical work from my lab that interrogates the computational principles […]
Lydia Hopper, Ph.D.Associate Professor, Department of Molecular & Comparative PathobiologyJohns Hopkins School of Medicine Title: Copy cats and aping apes: How social learning aids knowledge acquisition and the transmission of behavioral traditions Abstract: From ants to zebras, animals are influenced by the behavior of others. At the simplest level, social support can reduce neophobia, increasing […]
Daniel Butts, Ph.D.Professor, Dept of BiologyThe University of Maryland Cortical processing of high acuity vision When we want to see something, we look at it. Our highest acuity vision is present in the central one degree of our visual field (the fovea), and eye movements direct the fovea to regions of interest in the visual […]
Michael Yassa, Ph.D.Associate Dean, Professor, & DirectorUniversity of California, Irvine Episodic Memory, Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Memory is the sum of who we are. We strive to understand how brains can learn and remember information and in using this knowledge to improve the human condition. In particular, we focus on how our memory abilities change with […]
Peter Rudebeck, Ph.D.Associate Professor of Neuroscience and PsychiatryIcahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Prefrontal and limbic mechanisms of reward-guided decision-making and affect How do we decide what to pursue and how do we update our decisions as our wants and needs change? In our daily lives, our brains are constantly having to learn and […]
Greg DeAngelis, Ph.D.Professor of Brain and Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Biomedical Engineering School or Arts and Sciences: Brain and Cognitive SciencesUniversity of Rochester How the brain computes object motion and depth during self-motion Primate visual motion processing has provided a powerful model system for studying the neural basis of perception, decision-making, and action planning. However, […]
William R. Stauffer, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Neurobiology Center for Neuroscience University of Pittsburgh Title: From Control to Composition: Prefrontal Neuron Activity DuringCombinatorial Reasoning and Goal Formation Abstract: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is central to cognitive control, organizingbehavior to achieve internal goals. Yet a fundamental question remains: how do we definethose goals? In other words, […]
Ralf Haefner, Ph.D. Associate Professor School of Arts and Sciences: Brain and Cognitive Sciences University of Rochester Behavioral and neural signatures of generative inference in the brain It has long been understood that perception is an inference process during which the brain combines prior experience with incoming sensory information. Two influential frameworks guide the field’s […]
Marc Sommer, Ph.D. Professor of Biomedical Engineering Duke University Faculty Host: Dr. Hey-Kyoung Lee Neural mechanisms for visual continuity across eye movements Abstract: Moving while sensing the world provides animals with quick, efficient behaviors but introduces big challenges for perception. The nervous system must distinguish sensory inputs caused by external agents from spurious inputs caused […]
Anna Schapiro, Ph.D.Assistant Professor Department of PsychologyUniversity of Pennsylvania Faculty Host: Dr. Chris Fetsch Learning representations of specifics and generalities over time There is a fundamental tension between storing discrete traces of individual experiences, which allows recall of particular moments in our past without interference, and extracting regularities across these experiences, which supports generalization and […]
Jeremy D. Brown, Ph.D.Assistant Professor Department of Engineering @ Whiting School of EngineeringJohns Hopkins University Restoring dexterity in telerobotics: An engineer’s journey into neuroscience The human body can perform dexterous manipulation across a variety of environments. However, some environments present challenges due to limitations in function, distance, and scale. In many of these cases, access […]
