Prof at Birkbeck, UoL, and Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL. Cognitive neuroscientist examining action and perception. Cellist, lazy runner, mum.
https://psyc.bbk.ac.uk/actionlab/
https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/team/action-and-perception/
@clarepress and I are excited to share this #preprint about the history of #cognitivePsychology and #neuroscience research on how expectations influence #perception
We talk about a handful of the technological and theoretical advances that have enabled discoveries that could not have happened previously, and about the fact that technological and theoretical advances scaffold each other in a virtuous cycle.
We'd love to hear your thoughts!
The best [citation needed] ever.
The next session of this talk series is next Wednesday, 26th April.
Dr Lei Zhang (University of Birmingham) will tell us about flexible learning in the face of changing environmental contingencies, in a talk entitled:
"Cracking the neurocomputational mechanisms of flexible (social) behavior in health and disease"
Join us in person for an informal lunch from 12:30 in room 534, Malet St, or just for the talk from 1-2. Message me to join online.
The first paper from my PhD student Helen Olawole-Scott has now officially come out in JEP:G! 🥂
Expectations about precision bias metacognition and awareness.
On explanations in brain research:
A thread of the same idea comes up again and again in brain research. It's the notion that identifying the biological details (such as the brain areas/circuits or neurotransmitters) associated with some brain function (like seeing or fear or memory) is not a complete explanation of how the brain gives rise to that function (even if you can demonstrate the links are causal). To paraphrase:
Mountcastle: Where is not how https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674661882
Marr: How is not what or why http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/f18/David_Marr_Vision_A_Computational_Investigation_into_the_Human_Representation_and_Processing_of_Visual_Information.chapter1.pdf
@MatteoCarandini: Links from circuits to behavior are a "bridge too far" https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3043
Krakauer et al: Describing that is not understanding how https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(16)31040-6.pdf
Poppel: Understanding brain maps does not formulate "what about" the brain gives rise to "what about" behavior https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498052/
Any other explicit references to add to this list? @Iris, @knutson_brain, Anyone?
Also, I imagine that some form of the opposite idea must also be percolating: the notion that 'algorithmic' descriptions of the type used to build AI will be insufficient to do things like treat brain dysfunction (where we arguably need to know more about the biology to, e.g., create drugs). Any explicit references of that idea? @albertcardona @schoppik, @cyrilpedia, Anyone?
This monumental work by one of the world's greatest living neuroscientists does nothing short of creating a new subdiscipline in the field: perceptual neuroscience. Vernon Mountcastle has gathered information from a vast number of sources reaching back through two centuries, from phylogenetic, comparative, and neuroanatomical studies of the neocortex to rhythmicity and synchronization in neocortical networks and inquiries into the binding problem.
The first session of the new series of Birkbeck Psychology seminars is this Wednesday, 8th March.
Dr Emma James (University of York) will tell us about reading difficulties and accompanying difficulties in other domains, entitled:
"Specific comprehension difficulties are very rarely specific: tales from experimental and data-driven approaches"
Join us in person for an informal lunch from 12:30 in room 534, Malet St, or just for the talk from 1-2. Message me to join online.
RT @MH_Christiansen
In a letter in Cognitive Science, @pcontrerask,
@ross_dkm and I argue that Large Language Models - despite their many shortcomings - demonstrate that human-like grammatical language production can be learned from experience alone.
Read it for free here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cogs.13256
https://twitter.com/MH_Christiansen/status/1629600135901478915?t=V2SDmOKU3nmFce7iLjeU3A&s=19
📢 Dates for diary: Birkbeck Psychological Sciences are relaunching our seminar series 📢
Organised by me and @clarepress
Starting in 2 weeks; Wednesdays 1-2 pm UK time, Malet St London (and online). More details to follow.
Please feel free to share, and join us!
📢 New postdoc/PhD positions 📢
Examining how the oscillatory rhythm of sensory sampling is determined. M/EEG; modelling; psychophysics. With Matt Davis and Peter Kok.
PhD (by 27 Feb): https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/oscillatory-rhythms-of-sensory-sampling-fully-funded-phd/?d5780p154698
Postdoc (by 5 Mar): https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CWY349/postdoctoral-researcher
Pls retoot /circulate and ask me any questions
Dr Emma Kate Ward
Renée
Daniel Yon
Nicole Rust