EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS May 19 - 22, 2004 Boston University, 677 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02215 USA http://www.cns.bu.edu/meetings/ Sponsored by Boston University's Center for Adaptive Systems and Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems with financial support from the Office of Naval Research This interdisciplinary conference is attended each year by approximately 300 people from 30 countries around the world. As in previous years, the conference will focus on solutions to the questions: HOW DOES THE BRAIN CONTROL BEHAVIOR? HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY EMULATE BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE? The conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and artificial intelligence. The conference includes tutorial and invited lectures, and contributed lectures and posters, by experts on the biology and technology of how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a changing world. Single-track oral and poster sessions enable all presented work to be highly visible. Three-hour poster sessions with no conflicting events will be held on two of the conference days. Posters will be up all day, and can also be viewed during breaks in the talk schedule. TUTORIAL LECTURE SERIES Stephen Grossberg (Boston University): "Linking brain to mind." See below for details. CONFIRMED INVITED AND PLENARY SPEAKERS Ehud Ahissar (Weizmann Institute of Science): "Encoding and decoding of vibrissal active touch" John Anderson (Carnegie Mellon University): "Using fMRI to track the components of a cognitive architecture"=20 Alan D. Baddeley (University of Bristol): "In search of the episodic buffer" Moshe Bar (Massachusetts General Hospital): "Top-down facilitation of visual bject recognition" Gail A. Carpenter (Boston University): "Information fusion and hierarchical knowledge discovery by ARTMAP neural networks" Stephen Goldinger (Arizona State University): "Generalization gradients in perceptual memory" Daniel Kersten (University of Minnesota): "How does human vision resolve ambiguity about objects?" Stephen M. Kosslyn (Harvard University): "The imagery debate 30 years later: Can neuroscience help resolve the issue?" Tai-Sing Lee (Carnegie Mellon University): "Inference and prediction in the visual cortex" Eve Marder (Brandeis University): "Plasticity and stability in rhythmic neuronal networks" Bartlett W. Mel (University of Southern California): "The pyramidal neuron: What sort of computing device?" Miguel Nicolelis (Duke University): "Real-time computing with neural ensembles" Jeffrey D. Schall (Vanderbilt University): "Neural selection and control of visual guided eye movements" Chantal Stern (Boston University): "Sequence? What sequence? fMRI studies of the medial temporal lobe in sequence learning" Mriganka Sur (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): "Plasticity and dynamics of visual cortex networks" Joseph Z. Tsien (Princeton University): "Temporal analysis of memory process" William H. Warren Jr. (Brown University): "Behavioral dynamics of locomotor path formation" Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard Medical School): "Has "preattentive vision" reached the end of the road?" LINKING BRAIN TO MIND: A Tutorial Lecture Series by Stephen Grossberg ( mailto:steve@bu.edu ) http://www.cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg In 1983, Stephen Grossberg gave a week-long series of tutorial lectures at an NSF-sponsored conference at Arizona State University. The lectures included a self-contained introduction to principles, mechanisms, and architectures whereby neural models link mind to brain and inspire neuromorphic applications to technology. Many leaders of the Connectionist Revolution which gained momentum during the mid-1980s attended the conference. In 1990-1992, three additional tutorial lecture series were given at the Wang Institute of Boston University. Since 1992, major breakthroughs have occurred in the theoretical understanding of how a brain gives rise to a mind. Models have begun to quantitatively explain and predict the neurophysiologically recorded dynamics of identified nerve cells, in anatomically verified circuits and systems, and the behaviors that they control. Because these results clarify how an intelligent system can autonomously adapt to a changing world, they have also been used to develop biologically-inspired solutions to technological problems. Several research groups have asked Professor Grossberg to give another lecture series to chart recent progress. Each morning session of the May 2004 conference will include one such tutorial lecture. The lectures will introduce concepts, principles, and mechanisms of mind/brain modeling and summaries of recent models about how brain development, learning, and information processing control perception, cognition, emotion, and action during both normal and abnormal behaviors. Brain-inspired algorithms for solving difficult technological problems will also be described. CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Session Topics: * vision * image understanding * audition * speech and language * unsupervised learning * supervised learning * reinforcement and emotion * sensory-motor control * cognition, planning, and attention * spatial mapping and navigation * object recognition * neural circuit models * neural system models * mathematics of neural systems * robotics * hybrid systems (fuzzy, evolutionary, digital) * neuromorphic VLSI * industrial applications * other Contributed abstracts must be received, in English, by January 30, 2004. Notification of acceptance will be provided by email by February 27, 2004. A meeting registration fee must accompany each Abstract. See Registration Information below for details. The fee will be returned if the Abstract is not accepted for presentation and publication in the meeting proceedings. Registration fees of accepted Abstracts will be returned on request only until April 16, 2004. Each Abstract should fit on one 8.5" x 11" white page with 1" margins on all sides in a single-spaced, single-column format with a font of 10 points or larger, printed on one side of the page only. Fax or electronic submissions will not be accepted. Abstract title, author name(s), affiliation(s), mailing, and email address(es) should begin each Abstract. An accompanying cover letter should include: Full title of Abstract; corresponding author and presenting author name, address, telephone, fax, and email address; requested preference for oral or poster presentation; and a first and second choice from the topics above, including whether it is biological (B) or technological (T) work [Example: first choice: vision (T); second choice: neural system models (B)]. Talks will be 15 minutes long. Posters will be up for a full day. Overhead, slide, VCR, and LCD projector facilities will be available for talks. Abstracts which do not meet these requirements or which are submitted with insufficient funds will be returned. Accepted Abstracts will be printed in the conference proceedings volume. No longer paper will be required. The original and 3 copies of each Abstract should be sent to: Cynthia Bradford, Boston University, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, 677 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA. REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Early registration is recommended. To register, please fill out the registration form below. Student registrations must be accompanied by a letter of verification from a department chairperson or faculty/research advisor. If accompanied by an Abstract or if paying by check, mail to the address above. If paying by credit card, mail as above, or fax to +1 617 353 7755, or email to cindy@bu.edu . The registration fee will help to pay for a conference reception, 3 daily coffee breaks, and the meeting proceedings. STUDENT FELLOWSHIPS: Fellowships for PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows are available to help cover meeting travel and living costs. The deadline to apply for fellowship support is January 30, 2004. Applicants will be notified by email by February 27, 2004. Each application should include the applicant's CV, including name; mailing address; email address; current student status; faculty or PhD research advisor's name, address, and email address; relevant courses and other educational data; and a list of research articles. A letter from the listed faculty or PhD advisor on official institutional stationery must accompany the application and summarize how the candidate may benefit from the meeting. Fellowship applicants who also submit an Abstract need to include the registration fee payment with their Abstract submission. Fellowship checks will be distributed after the meeting.