[CTN] CTN Special Seminar - Mark Reimers, Sept 24th 2:30

[Chris Eliasmith]

Hello Everyone,

We have a special CTN seminar set up for next Friday, Sept
24th at 2:30pm in PAS 2464.  The speaker will be Dr. Mark
Reimers from VCU, a statistician working on neural imaging
methods and cognitive function.

Abstract below.

Best,
Chris

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Title: Neuroimaging and the Architecture of Action

Abstract:
This talk will develop the thesis that current imaging technologies and 
emerging strategies for analysis of imaging data will make quantitative 
data from neuroimaging much more germane to cognitive theories than they 
seem to be at present. I will illustrate this thesis by arguing that 
both distributed and localist models capture some part of the truth 
about brain activity, in that skilled behavior draws on sparsely 
distributed activity over several regions. This will be illustrated from 
the literature on functional data obtained by fMRI, by EEG/MEG, and from 
direct recordings. It turns out that many regions are useful (improve 
performance) for a variety of functionally distinct behaviors, while few 
regions are necessary (i.e. cannot be replaced).
I will describe some new technologies and some current work in data 
analysis strategies that will make neuroimaging data much more accurate, 
and hence even more relevant, in the near future.
Such considerations lead naturally to a discussion of what kinds of 
modeling strategies can be informed by these kinds of data. I will argue 
that much of cognitive modeling is implicitly Platonist about cognitive 
processes, but that the neuroimaging data is more consistent with an 
ad-hoc developmental and evolutionary view of cognition; such a view in 
turn suggests a somewhat different set of questions.