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February 2012

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1
12:00pm

Ciprian Catana - When one plus one equals more than two – simultaneous MR-PET imaging of the brain

Ciprian Catana M.D., Ph.D.
Director of Integrated MR-PET imaging at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center
for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Assistant Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School.

Abstract:

PET and MRI are two of the most powerful neuroimaging modalities. Recently, scanners capable of simultaneous PET and MR data acquisition in human subjects have become a reality and this new technology opens up possibilities impossible to realize using sequentially acquired data that could benefit many neurological applications. One such example is using the MR data for improving PET. While PET as a technique has many advantages, its accuracy is confounded by several factors. For example, attenuation and scatter correction have to be performed to account for the interactions of the gamma-ray photons in the subject before reaching the
detectors; motion correction has to be applied to avoid the degradation of the images due to involuntary head movements; partial volume effect correction is required due to the relatively limited spatial resolution;
an input function is required for accurate estimation of parameters of interest. The spatially and temporally correlated MR data acquired simultaneously offer the unique opportunity to correct for these confounding effects and improve the reliability and reproducibility of the PET estimates. On the other hand, the temporal correspondence of PET signals might help us better understand a number of MR techniques in vivo. In this talk, we will discuss our progress on implementing and validating these methods and our initial experience using this novel imaging technique for neuroimaging studies.
12:00pm

Harvard Decision Making Workshop

The goal of this workshop is to provide a broad and interdisciplinary perspective on research carried out by decision-making experts throughout the Harvard community, and beyond. It is also a unique opportunity for students to present to and get feedback from a diverse audience. The talk series is open to all, and lunch will typically be provided.

For additional questions please email Camille Morvan at camille.morvan@gmail.com

More info:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/decision-ws/General_Information.html
12:00pm

Giorgio Coricelli - Neural basis of strategic choice

Giorgio Coricelli (USC)

Abstract:

We propose to measure strategic uncertainty - uncertainty arising from multiple equilibria - by eliciting certainty equivalents in games analogous to measuring risk attitudes in lotteries. Participants played a series of stag hunt games, entry games, and lotteries. The two games differ in their equilibrium properties: stag hunt games are games of strategic complementarity (e.g., an investment pays off if and only if a sufficient number of agents invest in the same industry, so all invest and nobody invest are two Nash equilibria), while entry games are of strategic substitutability (e.g., if too many agents invest in a new market all get nothing; here we should not all do the same, but instead choose mixing strategies in equilibrium). We used fMRI to measure the neural correlates of strategic uncertainty and risk in games and lotteries. A brain network related to strategic reasoning (mPFC, TPJ, STS, precuneus) is activated in games playing vs. Lotteries, thus distinguishing the social and the private nature of the choice context. Furthermore, we found a behavioral correlation and a similar pattern of activity in the striatum (a reward/risk related structure) between choosing lotteries and choosing the stag hunt game; while insula and lateral OFC activity was mainly related to entry games choices. Interestingly, we found a clear separation of insula activity in lotteries and stag hunt games when distinguishing between risk averse and risk loving players. However, in entry games this distinction is not at all found. In the stag hunt game a single and intuitive guess has to be made: how many agents will choose high effort (risk); thus, in this game low level of strategic reasoning players who have a high-coordination belief and choose high effort and all higher-level players do the same thing. So low and high levels of reasoning correspond; put differently, 'further' deliberation does not produce a different choice and is inefficient. In entry game, however, you get the back and forth of enter-no-enter- etc.. Deliberation means an iterated set of reasoning in which the optimal choice at each of several points in the iteration is different. The results from the behavior and the brain reflect this crucial distinction between the two classes of games. We conclude that the entry game creates more strategic uncertainty as predicted by the nature of the theoretical equilibrium which also involves levels of strategic reasoning.
01:00pm

Mariusz Piertzyk - There is or there isn’t a lesion? – That’s the radiological dilemma

Mariusz Piertzyk

Abstract:

Radiological error due to the incorrect interpretation of medical images still occurs in current practice, which continues to be reported both in laboratory and clinical experimental conditions. In general radiological practice error rates range from 3 up to 5%. However, that scale stretches up to 30% for detection of some early cancers. Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) algorithms have been proposed to support human observer in verifying their choices. Although CAD systems might help in certain situations, its general implementation in clinical practice is still controversial. Perceptual studies, involving psychophysical approaches to the error problem, may give some insight into the gap between advances in image processing and the nature of radiological expertise. Moreover, some neuroscientific evidence underlines the importance of processing of spatial frequency properties of visual stimuli that is carried out by the Human Visual System (HVS). This has provided the inspiration for Spatial Frequency Analysis of certain Regions of Interest (ROI) selected by human observers in medical image interpretation in a number of studies.

Revision of several studies conducted at Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI), The University of Sydney, is going to be presented during the seminar, in particular:

· The effect of abnormality prevalence expectation on expert observer performance and visual search;
· Indirect detection of pulmonary nodule on low-pass filtered within first 300ms;
· Real-time implementation of Computer-aided perception (CAP);
· Pulmonary nodule detection dependence on visual task description;
· Breast lesion conspicuity index calculation.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7138
01:00pm

Beta Rhythms and Cognition

Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative and Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology

Winter 2012 Mini-Symposium

Hosted by Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (Nancy Kopell, Co-Director) & The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing (Azer Bestavros,
Director)

Dr. Earl Miller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Brain Rhythms in working memory and attention"

Dr. Nancy Kopell, Boston University "Beta rhythms can support short-term memory, learning and attention"

Dr. Nicholas Schiff and Dr. Keith Purpura, Weill Cornell Medical College "Beta rhythms in consciousness and cognition: The role of an anterior forebrain mesocircuit"

Dr. Stephanie Jones, Massachusetts General Hospital/Martinos Imaging Center "A proposed role for non-lemniscal/pallidal thalamus in cortical beta rhythmogenesis: From mechanism to meaning"

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Erica -- erh8x@bu.edu.



03:30pm

Douglas Black - Programs and Mechanisms of Neuronal Splicing Regulation

Douglas Black, PhD
Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute.


06:00pm

Ben Philpot - A new angle on Angelman syndrome

Ben Philpot, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology, University of North Carolina

Hosted by Mark Bear, Ph.D., Picower Professor of Neuroscience, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, MIT

Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu

Abstract:

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a genetic disorder characterized by developmental delay, absent speech, intellectual disability, severe epilepsy, ataxia, and abnormal sleep. AS is caused by mutations in or deletion of the maternal gene copy of UBE3A. Because the paternal copy of UBE3A is silenced in most neurons through epigenetic imprinting, lost function of the maternal allele eliminates UBE3A protein expression. This biology raises the possibility that Angelman syndrome could be treated by unsilencing the intact paternal UBE3A allele. No such therapies have been reported to date. We have developed a high- throughput method of finding small-molecule compounds that alter the expression of UBE3A. I will discuss my lab’s progress in identifying putative Angelman syndrome therapeutics using this drug screening approach.

Supported by the Simons Initiative on Autism and the Brain at MIT (http://web.mit.edu/autism)
2
04:00pm

Jonathan Wallis - Prefrontal computations underlying decision-making

Jonathan D. Wallis
University of California Berkeley & the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute

Abstract:

Damage to frontal cortex can produce a very specific deficit in decision-making. Patients make terrible life decisions and yet in all other respects their cognitive abilities are intact. My research aims to understand what computations frontal neurons perform that enable normal decision-making. We train monkeys to perform simple decision-making tasks while we record the activity of many single neurons throughout the frontal cortex. In this talk, I will describe a series of experiments in which we have dissociated the computations performed by two subregions of the frontal cortex: the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Our results are compatible with a two-stage model of decision-making. In this model, OFC is responsible for first calculating the motivational value of sensory stimuli in the environment. This is accomplished by integrating multiple decision parameters into a single abstract measure of value. This information is then passed to ACC where it can be used to determine the value of potential actions. ACC neurons do this by integrating information about action costs into the value signal. In addition, ACC is responsible for monitoring whether the expected outcome of the action matches the actual outcome. In this way, OFC and ACC jointly ensure that our actions are optimal with respect to realizing our motivational needs.

http://bcs.mit.edu/newsevents/calendar.php?calendar=single&id=14667016
3
10:30am

Lina Reiss - Hybrid cochlear implants, speech perception, and pitch plasticity

Lina Reiss (Oregon Health and Sciences University)

Abstract:

A recent advance in cochlear implants is the introduction of the Hybrid or electro-acoustic cochlear implant, comprised of a short version of a standard cochlear implant electrode array designed for preservation of residual low-frequency hearing, and thus combined acoustic and electric stimulation in the implanted ear. I will review the latest findings in the Hybrid clinical trial, what the Hybrid concept has taught us about speech perception and pitch plasticity, and the general implications of these findings for perception with cochlear implants and auditory prostheses.

http://www.bu.edu/dbin/hrc/calendar/
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6
10:00am

Eun Jung Hwang - Visuomotor control in posterior parietal cortex and implications for BMIs

Eun Jung Hwang, California Institute of Technology

Contact: Amy Madigan
email: amadi@MIT.EDU
12:15pm

Thomas Sudhof

Thomas Sudhof (Stanford University School of Medicine)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7112
7
04:00pm

Tobias Bonhoeffer - How activity changes synapses in the mammalian brain

2012 Brooks International Lecture

Tobias Bonhoeffer (Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7110
07:00pm

Sebastian Seung - CONNECTOME: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

Professor Sebastian Seung PhD will be releasing his new book "CONNECTOME: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are" http://connectomethebook.com/

On Tuesday February 7, 2012, at 7pm Sebastian will be holding a book talk at the Harvard Bookstore: http://www.harvard.com/event/sebastian_seung/
This is a free event and all are invited to attend.






8
12:00pm

Eng Lo - Neurovascular mechanisms of injury and repair after stroke

Eng H. Lo, PhD
Professor of Radiology and Neurology at Harvard Medical School and MGH

Abstract:

Over the past decade, numerous advances in neuroimaging have allowed us to probe the pathophysiology of brain injury after stroke. MRI tools centered on diffusion-perfusion mismatch may help identify patients with salvageable penumbra. PET imaging may help us characterize the ensuing dysregulations in cerebral blood flow and metabolism. However, in spite of these powerful in vivo techniques for "looking at stroke", we still lack clinically effective neuroprotective therapies. In this presentation, we will attempt to discuss the translational challenges involved in bridging promising experimental leads into clinically meaningful applications. Specifically, we try to address the following 3 concepts: Is it possible that beyond saving neurons (i.e. neuroprotection per se), we need to consider restoring cell-cell interactions between multiple brain cell types (i.e. the neurovascular unit)? Is it possible that many of the neurovascular mechanisms and targets underlying stroke are biphasic in nature (i.e. deleterious in the acute stage but beneficial during recovery)? Finally, in addition to cell and animal models, is it possible to develop "human models" that may help us link experimental platforms to the stroke patient?
9
04:00pm

Anne West - Phosphorylation of the methyl-binding protein MeCP2 modulates addictive- and depressive-like behaviors

Anne West, PhD (Duke University)

Abstract:

Psychostimulants and antidepressants induce long-lasting changes in behavior that are driven at least in part by the monoamine-dependent regulation of gene transcription in neurons that comprise brain reward circuits. We have found that the methyl-DNA binding chromatin regulatory protein MeCP2 is a target of psychostimulant-and antidepressant-activated intracellular signaling cascades via its phosphorylation at Ser421. In this talk, I will present evidence that genetic manipulation of MeCP2 Ser421 phosphorylation alters behavioral adaptations to repeated psychostimulant or antidepressant administration, and I will discuss the implications of these data for our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the development of addictive- and depressive-like behaviors.
10
10:30am

Oded Ghitza - Peak position coding of modulation spectrum: evidence for the function of brain rhythms in speech perception

Oded Ghitza (Boston University)

Abstract:

The premise of this study is that human speech decoding is governed by a cascade of neuronal oscillators that guide template-matching operations at a hierarchy of temporal scales. The oscillators are in the theta, beta and gamma frequency bands. It is argued that the theta oscillator is the master, capable of tracking the speech input rhythm. The other oscillators entrain to theta . The hypothesis about the role of theta was tested by measuring intelligibility of speech with manipulated modulation spectrum. Each critical-band envelope was manipulated by: (i) stopband filtering (2­–9 Hz), or (ii) peak position coding (PPC) – the lowpass filtered envelope (up to 10 Hz) was substituted for a train of identical pulses located at the peaks of the smoothed envelope. Stopband speech was barely intelligible, while PPC speech was somewhat intelligible; adding the two markedly improved intelligibility. It is argued that stopband speech is barely intelligible because, with the nullification of the band information, the (cortical) theta oscillator is prevented from tracking the input rhythm, hence the disruption of the hierarchical temporal scale that guides the decoding process. Plugging the PPC speech reinstates this capability, resulting in the extraction of additional information from the stopband modulation spectrum.

http://www.bu.edu/dbin/hrc/calendar/
01:00pm

Laura Schulz - The Origins of Inquiry: Inference and exploration in early childhood

Laura Schulz
Associate Professor, MIT BCS

Hosted by Nancy Kanwisher
03:00pm

Bard Ermentrout - Oscillations, synchrony, and disease: What can computational models tell us?

Bard Ermentrout
University Professor of Computational Biology, Professor of Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh

http://www.bu.edu/neuro/outreach/upcoming-neuroscience-day-2011/calendar/?eid=117447
04:00pm

Bruce Spiegelman - Transcriptional Control of Adipogenesis: Toward a New Generation of Therapeutics for Metabolic Disease

Bruce Spiegelman (Harvard Medical School)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
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14
10:00am

Will Harrison - Remapped Crowding: predictive remapping

Will Harrison
School of Psychology
The University of Queensland, Australia

Abstract:

Immediately prior to an eye movement, spatial information about potentially relevant visual objects is updated to compensate for the retinal displacement caused by the saccade. Although much is known about the processes involved in such updating, it remains unclear whether predictive remapping preserves an object's visual features across saccades. To investigate whether featural information of a probe object is updated during predictive remapping, we used a visual crowding paradigm. Observers executed a saccade to identify a probe letter presented at a known location in the periphery and at various intervals prior to the saccade. Flankers presented in the opposite visual field to the probe, but at screen positions that flanked the predicted post-saccadic location of the probe (the probe's "remapped location") reduced observers' ability to report the identity of the probe. This decrease was greater when probes and flankers shared elementary visual features compared with probes and flankers that were featurally distinct. Furthermore, probe identification was poorer when flankers appeared within the critical distance (half the eccentricity) of the probe's remapped location, than when flankers appeared beyond this distance. Finally, the pre-saccadic time course of this "remapped crowding" effect closely matched the neurophysiological time course of activity in neurons that predictively remap spatial information, previously reported in single-cell studies. Our findings reveal a form of non-retinotopic crowding, in which visual features from different visual fields are integrated due to predictive remapping. Remapped crowding is consistent with the notion that predictive remapping not only updates location information, but also preserves an object's featural information across saccades.


12:00pm

David Redish - The Neurophysiology of Deliberative and Non-Deliberative Decision-Making in the Rat

David Redish (University of Minnesota)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
04:00pm

Beth Stevens - Pruning CNS synapses: An active role for glia and the complement cascade

Beth Stevens (Harvard Medical School)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
15
12:00pm

Jeremy Wolfe - How do you decide that it is time to stop looking

Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard Visual Attention Lab)

Abstract:

Most of the work in the study of visual search concerns how you find what you are looking for. That is a good question, but what do you do if that target is not present? When do you stop looking? What if you are looking for an unknown number of targets (e.g. tumors in an Xray)? What if you are looking for something that is really rare (e.g. "threats" in carry-on bags at the airport)? What if you barely have to search at all? Suppose you are picking berries off a bush. When is it time to move to the next bush? I will show you what the behavior looks like in a variety of these situations and we can ask if a common quitting mechanism lies behind all of these decisions to stop looking.

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/decision-ws

12:00pm

Garth Beache - Imaging Signaling Pathways in the Insulin Cardiometabolism Syndrome: Mechanics-Vascular Coupling

Garth M. Beache, M.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
School of Medicine, University of Louisville

Abstract:

The overall goal of this research is to define magnetic resonance
markers that characterize a putative underlying abnormality of small
vessel regulation, and energetically-dependent final-common-pathway
functioning in a related group of conditions that are linked to heart
microvascular disease. This has potential implications for therapeutic
interventions targeted to biological mechanisms in these diseases. This
work has parallels for researches in the brain.
01:00pm

Ron Meir - The response of excitable neurons at long times - sensitivity, stability and stochasticity; exact analytic solutions for general biophysical models

Ron Meir, PhD. Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Technion (http://www.technion.ac.il/),
Haifa (http://www-ee.technion.ac.il/haifa.html),
http://webee.technion.ac.il/~rmeir/

Abstract:

Recently, Gal et al. (2010) stimulated individual, synaptically isolated, neurons from rat cortical culture, with periodic extra-cellular current pulses for extended durations of days. The neurons responded in a complex irregular and history dependent manner over the entire range of experimental timescales - from seconds to days. With the aim of developing a minimal biophysical explanation for these results, we propose a general scheme to analytically solve conductance based Hodgkin-Huxley-like models under pulse stimulation, and derive closed-form deterministic expressions for the transient behavior, firing rates and firing patterns of the neuron, under certain conditions on the time scales of the neuron and the stimulus.

However, the resulting firing patterns in these deterministic models are always periodic and stable, in contrast to the irregular behavior displayed by the neuron. This fact, and the sensitive near-threshold dynamics of the model, indicate that intrinsic ion channel noise has a significant impact on the neuronal response. However, such noise can only generate irregularity on a bounded timescale, indicating that additional non-stationary slow processes are required. And so, using this approach, we show that we can reproduce the experimental results only by taking into account at least a single kinetic variable (e.g., slow sodium inactivation), ion channel stochasticity, and additional cellular processes. Such processes are shown to have considerable impact on the neuronal response at long times. Finally, we present a closed form expression for the spectrum of action potential firing, which reproduces, among other phenomena, the observed 1/f spectrum of neuronal firing.
06:00pm

Katarzyna Chawarska - Autism in Infancy: Phenotypic Expression and Underlying Mechanisms

Katarzyna Chawarska, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry, Director, Toddler Developmental Disabilities Clinic, Yale University School of Medicine, Child Study Center

Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu

Abstract:

Autism, a complex neurodevelopmental disorder, has a profound impact on the quality of life of affected individuals. While in the past decade we have improved early diagnostic procedures for autism, little is known about the nature of the mechanisms underlying social disability in the second year of life. Are social deficits related to elementary difficulties in shifting attention? Are objects inherently more salient for infants with autism than typically developing children? What is the significance of high heterogeneity of early syndrome expression? This talk will describe findings from our ongoing work on the phenotypic expression of autism in infancy, spanning investigations into perception, attention, and cognition, and will discuss the implications of these investigations for research and clinical practice.

Hosted by Pawan Sinha, Ph.D., Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

All talks supported by the Simons Initiative on Autism and the Brain at MIT (web.mit.edu/autism)


11:00pm

Susan Goldin-Meadow: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language



2012 MIT Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition

Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Chicago

Title: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language
Host: Edward Gibson

Abstract:

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the answer to this question is "yes". I describe children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop.
In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing a language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures. Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process. For example, gesture could influence language-learning by eliciting from adults the kinds of words and sentences that the child needs to hear in order to take the next linguistic step. Gesture thus not only reflects the language-learning stages through which a young child passes--it may play a role in language-learning itself.
Gesture is versatile in form and function. Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the resilient properties of language. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech and can predict when and how a child will learn.



11:00pm

Susan Goldin-Meadow: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language


2012 MIT Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition

Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Chicago

Title: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language
Host: Edward Gibson

Abstract:

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the answer to this question is "yes". I describe children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop.
In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing a language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures. Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process. For example, gesture could influence language-learning by eliciting from adults the kinds of words and sentences that the child needs to hear in order to take the next linguistic step. Gesture thus not only reflects the language-learning stages through which a young child passes--it may play a role in language-learning itself.
Gesture is versatile in form and function. Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the resilient properties of language. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech and can predict when and how a child will learn.


16
11:00pm

Susan Goldin-Meadow: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language



2012 MIT Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition

Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Chicago

Title: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language
Host: Edward Gibson

Abstract:

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the answer to this question is "yes". I describe children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop.
In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing a language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures. Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process. For example, gesture could influence language-learning by eliciting from adults the kinds of words and sentences that the child needs to hear in order to take the next linguistic step. Gesture thus not only reflects the language-learning stages through which a young child passes--it may play a role in language-learning itself.
Gesture is versatile in form and function. Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the resilient properties of language. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech and can predict when and how a child will learn.



11:00pm

Susan Goldin-Meadow: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language


2012 MIT Colloquium on the Brain and Cognition

Speaker: Susan Goldin-Meadow Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, University of Chicago

Title: Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language
Host: Edward Gibson

Abstract:

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the answer to this question is "yes". I describe children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate - they gesture - and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop.
In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing a language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures. Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process. For example, gesture could influence language-learning by eliciting from adults the kinds of words and sentences that the child needs to hear in order to take the next linguistic step. Gesture thus not only reflects the language-learning stages through which a young child passes--it may play a role in language-learning itself.
Gesture is versatile in form and function. Under certain circumstances, gesture can substitute for speech, and when it does, it embodies the resilient properties of language. Under other circumstances, gesture can form a fully integrated system with speech and can predict when and how a child will learn.


12:00pm

Timothy Brady - The fidelity of visual memory over time

Timothy Brady
Department of Psychology
Harvard University

Abstract:

In previous research, we have shown that observers have an amazing capacity to remember the details of what they see in visual long-term memory. The first part of the talk will focus on how the fidelity of long-term memory compares to the fidelity of working memory and online visual perception. Surprisingly, we find that observers can remember the exact color of an object just as well after several hours as they can after just a few seconds. The second part of the talk will take advantage of how features in visual memory change over time to probe the nature of our object representations. I’ll show that observers’ seem to forget even meaningful dimensions of objects – for example, what kind of cup they were drinking from, on the one hand, and how full it was, on the other – independently over time. Together, these results show how understanding the change in our object representations over time can give us insight into both the processes of visual memory as well as the representation of visual objects.

(This work is joint with Talia Konkle, Jon Gill, Aude Oliva & George
Alvarez)
04:00pm

Susan Goldin-Meadow - Gesture's Role in Creating and Learning Language

Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago)

Abstract:

Imagine a child who has never seen or heard any language at all. Would such a child be able to invent a language on her own? Despite what one might guess, the answer to this question is "yes". I describe children who are congenitally deaf and cannot learn the spoken language that surrounds them. In addition, they have not yet been exposed to sign language, either by their hearing parents or their oral schools. Nevertheless, the children use their hands to communicate -they gesture- and those gestures take on many of the forms and functions of language. The properties of language that we find in the deaf children's gestures are just those properties that do not need to be handed down from generation to generation, but can be reinvented by a childde novo. They are the resilient properties of language, properties that all children, deaf or hearing, come to language-learning ready to develop. In contrast to these deaf children who are inventing a language with their hands, hearing children are learning language from a linguistic model. But they too produce gestures. Indeed, young hearing children often use gesture to communicate before they use words. Interestingly, changes in a child's gestures not only predate but also predict changes in the child's early language, suggesting that gesture may be playing a role in the language-learning process.

http://bcs.mit.edu/newsevents/calendar.php?calendar=single&id=14665880
05:30pm

Drummond Rennie - Clinical Trials: Is Corporate Sponsorship Compatible with Credibility?

Drummond Rennie (University of California, San Francisco)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
17
12:00pm

Miguel Eckstein - Why do we look towards the eyes? A sensory optimization theory

Miguel P. Eckstein, University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies

Abstract:

When viewing a human face people often look towards the eyes. A prominent idea holds that these fixation patterns arise solely due to social norms. Here, I will propose that this behavior can be explained as an adaptive brain strategy to learn eye movement plans that optimize performance in evolutionarily important perceptual tasks (Sensory Optimization Theory). First, I will show that humans move their eyes to points of fixation that maximize perceptual performance determining the identity, gender, and emotional state of a face. These optimal points of fixation, which vary moderately across tasks, are correctly predicted by a rational Bayesian ideal observer that integrates information optimally across the face but is constrained by the decrease in resolution and sensitivity from the fovea towards the visual periphery. A model that disregards the foveated nature of the visual system and makes eye movements to the regions/features with the highest discriminative information fails to predict the human fixations. Second, I will present evidence suggesting that there is individual variability in the preferred points of fixation with some humans looking near the eyes while others closer to the tip of the nose. These systematic differences persist over time and also correspond to individual variations in the points of fixation that maximize perceptual performance. Finally, I will show that when confronted with faces with unusual optimal points of fixation (e.g., mouth), observers have difficulty learning to fixate these new optimal points and fail to break away from their over-practiced eye movement strategies.


03:00pm

Simons Center for the Social Brain - Workshop and Funding Opportunity

http://web.mit.edu/scsb/

3:00-3:30pm Overview
Mriganka Sur, Ph.D.
Director, Simons Center for the Social Brain, Newton Professor of Neuroscience, MIT

3:30-4:00pm "Autism Spectrum Disorders - A Clinical Update: More Questions Than Answers"
Leonard Rappaport, M.D.
Chief, Division of Developmental Medicine Director, Developmental Medicine Center
Children's Hospital Boston

4:00pm-4:30pm "Brain and Behavioral Differences in Autism"
John D.E. Gabrieli, Ph.D.
Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

4:30-5:00pm "Animal Models for Studying Autism: From Genes to Circuits and Behavior"
Guoping Feng, Ph.D.
Poitras Professor of Neuroscience
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

5:00-6:00pm Wine and Cheese Reception
04:00pm

Peter Godfrey-Smith - Representation and the Brain

Peter Godfrey-Smith (CUNY)

Abstract:

Representation remains one of the most controversial concepts in cognitive science. I'll argue that new work is converging to give us a much better view of when the concept is useful and when it is not – when it yields a mere illusion of explanation. The talk will look back at how the concept of mental representation came to seem viable, in
the 1970s, and argue that a specific wrong turn was taken at that stage. After sketching an alternative view, I will apply it to some simple models of adaptive behavior, revisiting the "cognitive map" concept as a case study.

http://www.neuphi.com/index.php/meetings/meeting/meeting_45/
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12:00pm

Garga Chatterjee

Garga Chatterjee (Pawan Sinha's lab)
04:00pm

Alan Budney - Trouble with Cannabis? Really? What Might Help?

Alan Budney (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
22
10:30am

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham - Acoustic features and individual differences affecting auditory attention

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
Director, Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Boston University

Abstract:

In real-world settings, the abilities to focus, maintain, and switch auditory attention are each critical for allowing us to communicate. However, we are still unraveling what acoustic features enable these feats of selective attention, let alone why some listeners are better than others in performing these feats. This talk will review results of a number of experiments in my lab looking at some of the dynamics of auditory attention, exploring some of the features important in focusing on and maintaining attention on a source in a sound mixture. Recent results that speak to why there may be large differences in individual ability will also be presented.

http://www.bu.edu/dbin/hrc/calendar
12:00pm

Ed Boyden - Optogenetics, Robotic Neural Recording, and Other Neuroscience Tools

Ed Boyden, PhD
Benesse Career Development Professor
Leader, Synthetic Neurobiology Group
Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab
Joint Professor, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, MIT Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Investigator, MIT McGovern Institute
Associate Member, MIT Picower Institute

Abstract:

Understanding how neural circuits implement brain functions, and how these computations go awry in brain disorders, is a top priority for neuroscience. Over the last several years we have developed a rapidly-expanding suite of genetically-encoded reagents that, when expressed in specific neuron types in the nervous system, enable their electrical activities to be powerfully and precisely activated and silenced in response to pulses of light. These tools are in widespread use for analyzing the causal role of defined cell types in normal and pathological brain functions. In this talk I will briefly give an overview of the field, and then I will discuss a number of new tools for neural activation and silencing that we are developing, including new molecules with augmented amplitudes, improved safety profiles, novel color and light-sensitivity capabilities, and unique new capabilities. We have begun to develop hardware to enable complex and distributed neural circuits to be precisely controlled, and for the network-wide impact of a neural control event to be measured using distributed electrodes, fMRI, and robotic intracellular neural recording. We explore how these tools can be used to enable systematic analysis of neural circuit functions in the fields of emotion, sensation, and movement, and in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Finally, we discuss our pre-clinical work on translation of such tools to support novel ultraprecise neuromodulation therapies for human patients.
01:00pm

John Assad - Decisions, Categories and Parietal Cortex

John Assad (Harvard Neuroscience)

Abstract:

The inferior parietal lobe is involved in the perception of visual space and the control of eye movements. Neurons in the primate lateral intraparietal area (LIP) have also been implicated in perceptual decision-making. In those experiments, monkeys typically signal their percept by making saccadic eye movements in specific directions. We asked whether parietal neurons are involved in decisions that do not have a spatially specific motor read-out. In our first experiment, we trained monkeys to group directions of motion into two180°-wide “categories”. After training, we found that LIP neurons reflected the learned category boundary, in that individual neurons tended to respond similarly within direction categories but differently between categories. We examined the generality of these effects by training animals in a paired-associate task in which the animals learned to group pairs of arbitrarily chosen static shapes. We found again that LIP neurons reflected the learned pair-associations, in that individual neurons tended to respond more similarly for associated pairs of shapes than for unassociated pairs of
shapes. In both the direction-categorization task and the shape-paired-associate task we used a delayed match-to-category (-pair) paradigm that dissociated the category (pair) identity from the hand movement the animal used to signal its report. We also controlled carefully for behavioral artifacts that could have produced the observed neuronal selectivity. Our results suggest that parietal neurons provide decisional signals that do not fit in a spatial- or motor-based framework. These findings challenge the generality of models positing that categorical
decisions are represented in an action- or intention-based framework. Action-based frameworks have been proposed for other brain representations, such as for the representation of value. However, we also find action-independent neuronal representations of value in orbitofrontal cortex. We hypothesize that non-action-based representations are prevalent in the brain and can be revealed by appropriate experimental design.

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/decision-ws/Spring_2012.html
02:00pm

Ronen Segev - What can a small fish teach us about visual processing?

Ronen Segev
Life Sciences Department & Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience
Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Abstract:

Vision can be defined as the process of acquiring knowledge about the environment by extracting information from the light that the objects emit or reflect. To achieve this goal, numerous different visual systems have evolved in the animal kingdom. This brings up the question whether there are universal features to the visual processing solutions we can find in nature. To address this question we use the archer fish as an animal model to study different aspect of visual processing. The selection of this fish species as model animal stems from its remarkable ability to shoot down insects settling on the foliage above the water level, and its ability to learn to distinguish between artificial targets presented on a computer monitor. Thus, the archer fish can provide the fish equivalent of a monkey or a human that can report psychophysical decisions and make controlled and complex experimental procedures possible, yet with a very different brain anatomy. I will review our recent findings that show remarkable similarities between the functionality of the visual system of the archer fish and visual systems
in mammals and try to argue that it reflects universal features of visual processing across vertebrates.
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01:00pm

Li-Huei Tsai - Epigenetic Mechanisms Regulating Memory Formation in Health and Disease

Li-Huei Tsai (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
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02:00pm

Hideki Ohira - Functional association of brain and body in affective decision making

Affective Science Institute Monthly Speaker Series, Northeastern University

Hideki Ohira - Nagoya University, Japan

Though traditional microeconomics has supposed that human decisions are based on logical and exact computation of cost-benefit balances or efficacies, studies in behavioral economics and psychology have shown that humans sometimes make irrational decisions driven by affects, especially when values of options and contingencies between options and outcomes are uncertain. Some theorists argued that one important source of such affective drives influencing decision making is bodily responses which are represented in brain regions such as the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. In this talk, empirical evidence for the functional associations of the brain and body accompanying affective decision making will be shown as follows. (1) Heart rate responses and concentration of inflammatory cytokine (IL-6) can predict acceptance or rejection to an unfair offer in an economical negotiation game, the Ultimatum Game. Activation of the anterior insula mediates this phenomenon. (2) Enhancement of interoception by biofeedback technique affects decision making with risk. (3) Sympathetic responses reflected by secretion of epinephrine are represented in brain regions such as the midbrain, anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula, and furthermore can determine randomness of decision making in a situation where action-outcome contingency is stochastic and unstable.

http://www.northeastern.edu/asi/monthly-speaker-series/
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10:00am

Susan Nittrouer - Language and Early Literacy Skills of Preschoolers with Cochlear Implants

Susan Nittrouer, Ph.D.

Professor and Director of Research, Otolaryngology - Head & Neck
Surgery, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

Professor, Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
12:15pm

Masashi Yanagisawa - From orphan GPCR to therapeutic target: The hypothalamic orexin and the mystery of sleep

Masashi Yanagisawa (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
12:15pm

Erin O’Shea - Timekeeping with a Three-Protein Circadian Clock

Erin O’Shea (Harvard University)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
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12:00pm

Peter Battaglia - Intuitive Mechanics in Physical Reasoning

Peter Battaglia (MIT Tenenbaum lab)

Abstract:

People rely on their "physical intelligence" -- the ability to infer physical properties of objects and predict future states in complex, dynamic scenes -- to interpret their surroundings and plan safe and effective actions. For instance, you can choose where to place your coffee to prevent it from spilling, arrange books in a stable stack, and shoot billiard balls to cause desired sequences of collisions. These behaviors suggest the brain performs sophisticated reasoning using rich physical knowledge, but the specific content of this knowledge, and how it is
applied, remain unclear. Previous work has focused on identifying biases and errors, or testing simple models on highly-specific judgments; here, we seek a unifying account that can quantitatively predict a broader spectrum
of human abilities.

This talk explores the idea that the brain has an "intuitive mechanics", a realistic model of physics that can estimate physical properties and predict probable futures. This intuitive mechanics is surprisingly faithful to the laws of classical mechanics, it captures statics, dynamics, forces, collisions, and friction. It is fundamentally probabilistic, it supports Bayesian inferences that robustly handle uncertainty, and, like people, its predictions sometimes deviate from objective reality. And, it is resource-bounded, supporting only judgments that can be made based on a few low-precision, short-lived simulation runs. We conducted a series of psychophysical experiments in which participants made physical judgments about various complex, 3D scenes, and found that a formal model of intuitive mechanics well-predicts people's responses by accounting for their accuracy and several systematic biases. These results suggest that an approximate, probabilistic model of physics forms the basis of human physical reasoning. More generally, this principled computational approach provides a unifying framework for analyzing and understanding this crucial part of human cognition.
02:00pm

Cell Biology Symposium: Cell Biology of Sexual Reproduction

Bruce Baker (Janelia Farm)
Nirao Shah (University of California, San Francisco)
Barbara Meyer (University of California, Berkeley)
Kazushige Touhara (University of Tokyo)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
04:00pm

Christopher Cowan - Transcriptional mechanisms of synapse elimination: Implication for drug addiction, Fragile X syndrome and Autism

Christopher Cowan (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-neurotalks/message/7152
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12:00pm

Todd Horowitz - Remembering the present: Multiple Object Tracking as a continuous visual working memory task

Todd Horowitz, Visual Attention Lab, Brigham and Women's
Classical accounts assume that multiple object tracking is a purely spatial task, involving spatial indexes, spatial attention, or spatial grouping processes which encode little or no information about target features. Yet the ability to track the positions of multiple targets but not their identity would be a pyrrhic accomplishment by the visual system. Indeed, multiple identity tracking experiments demonstrate that the visual system does know which objects are where. I will describe studies demonstrating that identity (featural) and spatial information are encoded in a common representation during tracking. Prioritizing location information reduces fidelity of identity information and vice versa. Improving encoding of identity information frees up space for positional information. Electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies demonstrate a substantial overlap between the brain networks implicated in visual working memory tasks and those implicated in tracking (particularly in intraparietal sulcus); though tracking evokes additional activity presumably reflecting updating processes. Tracking can be seen as a continuous visual working memory task; alternatively, we can see visual working memory as a degenerate tracking task.


12:00pm

Amy Cuddy - Fake it ‘til You Make It: Power Posing Change Hormones, Risk Tolerance, and Job Interview Success

Amy Cuddy (Harvard Business)

http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/decision-ws/Spring_2012.html
12:00pm

Keith Johnson - Molecular, structural and functional imaging in preclinical Alzheimer's disease

Keith A. Johnson, M.D.
Radiology and Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, MGH

Abstract:

Converging evidence suggests that the pathophysiological process of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) begins more than a decade before the clinical stage we now recognize as AD dementia. Even by the stage of mild impairment, the neurodegeneration of AD is thought to be well entrenched, and amyloid deposition has already been present for years. Attempts to clarify the pathogenetic chain of events have proceeded in parallel with the related task of human AD biomarker development. In this talk, I will review recent data from normal older adults in which amyloid deposition is related to brain volume and brain glucose metabolism, in an attempt to characterize the preclinical state and to develop therapeutic trial endpoints.
01:00pm

Timothy Buschman - Evidence from Capacity Limitations for a Dual-Model of Working Memory

Timothy Buschman (MIT, Miller Lab)

Abstract:

Cognition has a severely limited capacity: Adult humans can retain only about four items “in mind”. This limitation is fundamental to human brain function: Individual capacity is highly correlated with intelligence measures and capacity is reduced in neuropsychiatric diseases. Although human capacity limitations are well studied, their mechanisms have not been investigated at the single-neuron level. Simultaneous recordings from monkey parietal and frontal cortex revealed that visual capacity limitations occurred immediately upon stimulus encoding and in a bottom-up manner. Capacity limitations were found to reflect a dual model of working memory. The left and right halves of visual space had independent capacities and thus are discrete resources. However, within each hemifield, neural information about successfully remembered objects was reduced by adding further objects, indicating that resources are shared. Together, these results suggest visual capacity limitation is due to discrete, slot-like, resources, each containing limited pools of neural information that can be divided among objects.
 
 
 
 

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