The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series presents:

Friday, December 1
4pm
Oak 109

Phil Corlett, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University will present a lecture on:

Psychosis as a window on perception and belief

Psychosis has many causes but is generally defined in terms of conscious experiences of the world, and of oneself, that deviate appreciably from consensual reality. It may be useful to break it down into its component symptoms of anomalous perceptions (“hallucinations”) and bizarre and inexplicable beliefs (“delusions”). A major challenge in developing a comprehensive and coherent understanding of psychosis is to characterize the nature of disturbances that may give rise both to a profoundly altered experience and understanding of the world and to an impairment in one’s capacity to sample and use evidence in order to optimize inferences. I will argue that these symptoms both entail devising a world model that accounts for one’s reality. I will explore the degree to which developing our understanding of the brain as a predictive inference device can provide a powerful explanatory framework within which to understand the disruptions in conscious experience of the world that characterize psychosis, from fundamental and pervasive perturbations in interoception, exteroception, self perception to wider disruptions in how one infers the contents of other minds. Moreover, by refining our understanding of how these disturbances may occur, we gain valuable insights to how the brain generates our experiences more generally.

 

 

The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS) is inviting applications to its Graduate Fellowship Program.

These 3-month fully funded summer fellowships are intended for graduate students working on topics with relevance (broadly construed) to the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. IBACS Graduate Fellows attend a short grant-writing workshop at the start of the summer period (May 14 & 16, 2018), and will be expected to submit an application to the NSF GRFP, NRSA (pre- or post-doctoral fellowship), or equivalent, in the Fall.

Deadline for receipt of applications is December 8th.

Graduate students who are not US citizens are eligible to apply, and are expected to work with their advisor to develop an external research proposal if they are not eligible for graduate fellowships. Students who were fellows in 2016 or 2017 may apply if they submitted the external grant proposal they developed last year and it was not funded, with the expectation that they will revise their previous grant or develop a new one.

Please refer to the full details here.

The Fall 2017 issue of the IBACS Brain, Cognition and Language Digest, on the topic of Bilingualism, has just been published.

Feel free to review it online here, or stop by the Institute on th 3rd Floor of Arjona to pick up a hard copy.

 

Chris Heffner (PostDoc) and Lauren Powers (UConn KIDS Recruitment Coordinator) will be hosting two information sessions for Living Lab.

The Living Lab is located in the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. This interactive Lab space is a resource available to faculty and graduate researchers at UConn for purposes of data collection on site with public museum visitors.

 

INFORMATION SESSIONS
Wednesday 11/29 at 12:00pm in Laurel Hall room 106
Friday 12/1 at 3:00pm in Laurel Hall Room 106

 

If you are unable to attend one of the sessions but would like more information, please contact Lauren Powers

Treatment studies have shown pre to post changes in reading circuits with evidence based remediation of reading disability, establishing the neural signature of successful treatment outcome. However, insight into the neurobiological mechanisms by which treatment produces these consequences/outcome requires monitoring modulations of key brain regions throughout the course of treatment and such data are lacking.

In the current research, we are following children with reading difficulties in 2nd Grade through an evidence-based training program. Cognitive testing and functional MRI scanning before and after the intervention at the University of Connecticut Brain Imaging Center (UConn BIRC) with comparisons to untreated RD and TD control groups will allow for the identification of key neurocognitive factors associated with response to treatment. We will also obtain nine recordings of brain activity at Haskins Laboratories using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging throughout 20 weeks of instruction to identify how online modulation of circuits during treatment relates to weekly measures of reading performance – growth spurts (or regressions) over the course of treatment. This dynamic tracking study will yield new insights into how evidence-based training modulates brain organization for learning to support reading gains and why it fails to do so for some children. This is an NIH funded project under the direction of PI Dr. Ken Pugh of UConn & Haskins Laboratories.

We are looking for assistance running the functional MRI scans at the UConn BIRC. This is an excellent opportunity for those looking to gain hands on experience working with clinical populations and cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques. In addition to administering the fMRI task paradigms, we are looking for people who are comfortable working with children and interacting with families. Available hours must be flexible with most scans likely to be during the early evening hours or weekends. If you are interested, please contact Devin Kearns <devin.kearns@uconn.edu> or Steve Frost <frosts@haskins.yale.edu>.

 

 

Boston College

Lab Manager Position

Language Learning Lab 

 

The Language Learning Laboratory at Boston College, directed by Dr. Joshua
Hartshorne, invites applications for full-time research assistants. Our
research sits at the intersection between linguistics, neuroscience,
artificial intelligence, and psychology. Our strategy is to leverage new
and emerging technologies to address previously unanswerable scientific
questions. This includes massive crowdsourcing efforts (our website,
gameswithwords.org, has been visited by over 2,000,000 volunteer
researchers).

The only requirements for this position are a bachelor’s degree or
equivalent (in hand by start date), diligence, and the ability to work in
teams. However, valuable skills and experiences include: prior research
experience, training in linguistics, knowledge of non-English languages,
computer programming or statistical skills, and experience with science
outreach and public engagement. Lab managers will be engaged primarily in
research or in administration and project management, depending on
interests and abilities.

 

You can learn more about this position at http://l3atbc.org/PostBac.html

Review will begin on 11/15/2017 and continue until the position is filled.

All questions can be directed to info@l3atbc.org.