Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.  Speaker: Julian Jara-Ettinger, Yale University. Title: The Computational Basis of Commonsense Psychology.  Abstract: By kindergarten, our knowledge of agents has unfolded into a powerful intuitive theory that enables us to thrive in our social world. In this talk I will propose that children build their commonsense psychology around a basic assumption that agents choose goals and actions by quantifying, comparing, and maximizing utilities. This naïve utility calculus captures much of the rich social reasoning we engage in from early childhood. I explore this theory in a series of experiments looking at children’s ability to infer costs and rewards given partial information, their reasoning about knowledgeable versus ignorant agents, their ability to interpret ambiguous utterances, and their reasoning about the moral status of agents. Moreover, a formal model of this theory, embedded in a Bayesian framework, predicts with quantitative accuracy how humans make cost and reward attributions. The theory also offers insights into a range of other phenomena in commonsense psychology that, on the surface, do not appear to involve utility maximization

Perception & Action Seminar Series. Speaker: Dr. Jon Matthis, Northeastern University.  Title: Retinal optic flow and the visual control of locomotion over real-world rough terrain.  Abstract: Human locomotion through natural environments requires the coordination of all levels of the sensorimotor hierarchy, from the cortical areas involved in processing of visual information and high level planning to the subcortical and spinal structures involved in the regulation of the gait and posture. In this talk, I will present some findings of an ongoing investigation into the way that the visual system interacts with the biomechanical aspects of gait in order to support stable locomotion over real world rough terrain. This research utilizes a novel apparatus to record 3D gaze and full body kinematics of walkers traversing different types of real-world rough terrain. The results that walkers tune their gaze behavior in each terrain to the specific information needed to tailor their energetically optimal preferred gait cycle to the upcoming path in order to balance between the competing demands of efficiency and stability. I will conclude with some recent research that utilizes methods from computer vision to quantify the information in the visual stimulus experienced during natural locomotion. Specifically, measuring the optic flow experienced during locomotion reveals patterns that are markedly different from descriptions in the literature on the neural processing of visual self-motion. Nevertheless, there are regularities to retina-centered optic flow that suggest a much richer source of information that may be used to enact fine grained control of locomotion through the natural world.

As part of the 2019 MMI Fall Seminar Series, Gregorio Valdez, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry at Brown University, will be giving a lecture titled “Cellular and molecular changes that precipitate ALS pathogenesis”. Hosted by Jennifer Sanders, Ph. D., this lecture will meet in Marcuvitz Auditorium in Room 220 in Sidney Frank Life Sciences Building, 185 Meeting Street. Refreshments will be served at 11:45am.

Probing the mysteries of prefrontal beta oscillations in stopping action and thought

Data Science Computing and Visualization Workshop (DSCoV)

Want to be a software master, start a tech company, or succeed in research? Ready to get your hands dirty and learn the data science and programming skills needed to solve real-world data science problems? Come to a DSCoV workshop! Open to all members of the Brown community, these lunch-hour workshops are led by Brown faculty, staff, and students.

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC: Tensorflow on low power devices
INSTRUCTOR: Lakshmi Govindarajan

Registration is necessary; limited to 40 participants.

Friday, October 25, 12:00 PM
164 Angell Street, 4thFloor Innovation Space.
Organized by Center for Computation and Visualization
Sponsored by the DataScienceInitiative
Pizza and soda will be served.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series. Please note - there are 2 speakers for this event.  Speaker 1: Harrison Ritz, Brown University.  Title: Parametric control of distractor-oriented attention.  Speaker 2: Eunkyu Hwang, Brown University. Title: What does the retrosplenial cortex do? -Investigating the core function of the retrosplenial cortex.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Colloquium Series.  Speaker: C. Malik Boykin, Brown University.  Title: Hierarchy preference and group status impact racial identities and intergroup attitudes.  Abstract: My research addresses dynamics between members of minority and majority groups. Historically, this conversation has focused on understanding attitudes of majority group members and their impact on minority group members. I incorporate this perspective, while seeking to expand our understanding of individual differences in the attitudes of minority group members. This talk highlights two interrelated aspects of my research program. First, I discuss individual differences in Black people’s preferences for group inequality and the impact of these preferences on racial identity attitudes. Next, I discuss how perceived threats to majority group members’ societal status can inform majority group member attitudes towards education institutions designed for the upward status mobility of Black people.

Title: “Cell Senescence in Aging & Dementia”

Speaker: John M Sedivy, PhD

Professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry

Brown University

Time: 1:00 PM -2:00 PM

Location: RI Hospital

Ambulatory Patient Center

Leone Conference Room, Suite 133

We are happy to announce a new speaker series organized by Brown’s new EEG core Initiative. This series is aimed at bringing the EEG research community together to learn and discuss the latest and greatest EEG methods and findings from leading experts within and outside of the Brown community. Our inaugural speaker will be Professor Matti Hamalainen from Massachusetts General Hospital.

Title: EEG and MEG - The Non-Identical Twins

Speaker: Matti Hamalainen, Ph.D., Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Coffee and cookies will be served.

Please RSVP using the link below, as seating is limited.

https://forms.gle/aF152qnVGtucHprN6

Please email [email protected] with any questions or concerns.

Brain-computer interfaces for basic science

Data Science Computing and Visualization Workshop (DSCoV)

Want to be a software master, start a tech company, or succeed in research? Ready to get your hands dirty and learn the data science and programming skills needed to solve real-world data science problems? Come to a DSCoV workshop! Open to all members of the Brown community, these lunch-hour workshops are led by Brown faculty, staff, and students.

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC: Cloud computing with Google Cloud Platform, interacting with and using the Compute Engine
INSTRUCTOR: Isabel Restrepo

Registration is necessary; limited to 40 participants.

Friday, November 1, 12:00 PM
164 Angell Street, 4thFloor Innovation Space.
Organized by Center for Computation and Visualization
Sponsored by the DataScienceInitiative
Pizza and soda will be served.

Perception & Action Seminar Series. Dr. David Rosenbaum, University of California, Riverside. Title: TBA

Data Science Computing and Visualization Workshop (DSCoV)

Want to be a software master, start a tech company, or succeed in research? Ready to get your hands dirty and learn the data science and programming skills needed to solve real-world data science problems? Come to a DSCoV workshop! Open to all members of the Brown community, these lunch-hour workshops are led by Brown faculty, staff, and students.

THIS WEEK’S TOPIC: Intro to GPU and CUDA
INSTRUCTOR: Khemraj Shukla

Registration is necessary; limited to 40 participants.

Friday, November 8, 12:00 PM
164 Angell Street, 4thFloor Innovation Space.
Organized by Center for Computation and Visualization
Sponsored by the DataScienceInitiative
Pizza and soda will be served.

Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Seminar Series.  Speaker: Sara Sanchez-Alonzo, Yale University.  Title: Comparing Naturalistic Viewing and Rest Reveals Brain-Wide Differences in Functional Connectivity Across Development.  Abstract: Cognitive states, such as rest and task engagement, are hypothesized to share an ‘intrinsic’ functional network organization that is subject to minimal variation over time and to yield stable signatures within and individual. However, there are transient state-specific functional connectivity (FC) patterns that vary across states. In this talk, I will examine functional brain organization differences that underlie distinct neural states and how they are shaped by neurodevelopment by comparing FC fMRI data acquired during naturalistic viewing (i.e. movie-watching) and resting-state paradigms in a large cohort of 157 children and young adults aged 6-20. Naturalistic paradigms are commonly implemented in pediatric research, often in place of (or in conjunction with) resting-state because they maintain the child’s attention and contribute to reduced head motion. However, it remains unknown to what extent the brain-wide functional network organization remains comparable during movie-watching and rest across developmental stages. I will show how we can identify a robust brain-wide FC pattern that predicts whether individuals are watching a movie or resting. Specifically, I will present a model for prediction of multilevel neural effects (termed PRIMENET) which can with high reliability distinguish between movie-watching and rest irrespective of age. In turn, the model characterizes FC patterns in the most predictive functional networks for movie-watching versus rest and show that these patterns can indeed vary as a function of development. Collectively, these effects highlight a ‘core’ FC pattern that is robustly associated with naturalistic viewing, which also exhibits change across development. Crucially, these results, focused here on naturalistic viewing, provide a roadmap for quantifying state-specific functional neural organization across development, which may reveal key variation in state-specific neuro-developmental trajectories.

Speaker: John Wixted, UCSD.  Title: TBA

Perception & Action Seminar Series. Speaker: Dr. Dagmar Sternad, Northeastern University.  Title: TBA