Virtual IBACS Meet & Speak: October 10th, 2020
The CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) hosted its annual “Meet and Speak” event virtually via Zoom on Saturday, October 10th. This event is an opportunity to learn more about the diverse research that IBACS affiliates are engaged in, and provides a forum for cross-disciplinary networking. Faculty gave 10-minute presentations describing, in accessible language, the research they have carried out, or propose carrying out in relation to the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Graduate students affiliated with the Institute provided short “datablitz” style presentations about their involvement in IBACS seed-funded or fellowship-supported research. Following the graduate student blitz, there was a panel discussion to commemorate our 5-year anniversary. The panel discussed questions such as the following: What does brain science/cognitive science mean to you? What are the challenges to progress that particularly excite you? What are the opportunities for progress? Where is brain science/cognitive science heading, or where should it head? Following the panel discussion, Dr. John Gabrieli, MIT presented a keynote talk. Some links to individual talks (including the keynote) and the panel discussion can be found below:
Faculty Talks
Eric Levine, Neuroscience
Cellular effects of a common BDNF gene variant associated with altered cognition in humans
Sharon Casavant, Nursing
Predicting neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants using absolute telomere length
Sabato Santaniello, Biomedical Engineering
Cerebellar stimulation and network-wide oscillations in essential tremor
Linnaea Ostroff, Physiology and Neurobiology
Synaptic pathways of fear and safety
James Magnuson, Psychological Sciences
Computational modeling of human speech recognition
John Salamone, Psychological Sciences
Inflammation and effort-related motivational dysfunction in rat models: Implications for psychopathology
Umay Suanda, Psychological Sciences
How toddlers learn the meanings of words: A Statistical Learning approach
Noelle Wig, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
A Dynamic Duo: Interaction between referential context and bilingualism in sentence processing
Gerry Altmann, Psychological Sciences
Representing events in deep neural networks
Sandra Villata, Linguistics & Psychological Sciences
An empirical investigation of ungrammatical sentence processing
Graduate Student Blitz
Lana Delasanta, Psychological Sciences
Analyzing group drumming using a Nonlinear Dynamics approach
Yi Wei, Psychological Sciences
Neural resonance to syncopated rhythms: Model predictions and experimental tests
Hannah Morrow, Psychological Sciences
Waves of Binding: EEG oscillations during integration of visual, auditory, and lexical stimuli
Briana Oshiro, Mathematics
A brief introduction to Dynamic Causal Modeling
Emily Yearling, Psychological Sciences
Using the past to understand the present: Insights into the episodic nature of tokenization
Aliyar Ozercan, Philosophy
Mental states and language development
Panel Discussion
Featuring Whit Tabor, Holly Fitch, Sabato Santaniello, and John Gabrieli with Gerry Altmann as moderator
Current directions, challenges, and opportunities in the brain and cognitive sciences
Keynote Talk
John Gabrieli, Director of the Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute, MIT
Title: Environmental Influences on Human Brain Development
Abstract: Neuroimaging provides new views on how environmental factors influence human brain development. I will review findings about associations (1) among family socioeconomic status (SES), brain anatomy, and academic performance; (2) between early language experience and brain function and structure; and (3) between stress and brain function and how those can be altered by mindfulness training.