CONAS 2012 - WORKSHOP ON COGNITIVE DYNAMICS IN NEURAL SYSTEMS: MATHEMATICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL MODELING

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Category CONAS 2012

Deadline: October 31, 2011 | Date: March 29, 2012-March 30, 2012

Venue/Country: Lyon, France

Updated: 2011-12-07 12:42:03 (GMT+9)

Call For Papers - CFP

http://conas2012.elis.ugent.be/

A two-day open workshop in Lyon, France, March 29 & 30, 2012

Animals are proof that complete cognitive systems can be realized in

neural substrates. It is thus natural that engineers from AI and

machine learning have tried to design advanced cognitive systems on

the basis of artificial neural networks. This has led to illuminating

concepts and architectures in fields like computational linguistics,

dynamic pattern recognition, autonomous agents, or evolutionary

robotics. However, if one takes a close and critical look, one finds

that nowhere do artificial systems close to biological

levels of performance. One important cause for this gap is a lack of

appropriate mathematical concepts. Biological neural systems are

high-dimensional, nonlinear, heterogeneous, multiscale, nonstationary,

stochastic, and heavily input-driven - a cocktail of properties which

overwhelms current dynamical systems theory. Inasmuch as we do not

possess mathematical models for such systems, we cannot understand

them; and inasmuch as we do not understand, we cannot engineer.

This workshop will bring together researchers from three fields:

1. cognitive scientists, roboticists and machine learning engineers

who develop complex, neural-network-based architectures;

2. computational neuroscientists who apply existing methods from

dynamical systems theory to neural dynamics;

3. mathematicians who work on extensions of dynamical systems theory

in directions that appear relevant for neurodynamics and complex

neural learning architectures.

Invited speakers:

* Randall D. Beer, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA: Information and Dynamics in Brain-Body-Environment Systems

* Chris Eliasmith, Univ. of Waterloo, Canada: How to Build a Brain: From Single Neurons to a Cognitive Architecture

* Olivier Fauguras, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France: Neural fields in Action: Mathematical Results and Models of Visual Perception

* Tomas Gedeon, Montana State University, Bozeman, USA: Correspondence Maximization: a Potential Model for the Function of Multi-Layer Neural Architectures

* Juergen Jost, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany: Information Theory, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Recurrent Neural Processing

* Christian Poetzsche, Alpen-Adria Univ. Klagenfurt, Austria: Nonautonomous Dynamics - A Biased Survey

* Gregor Schoener, Univ. of Bochum, Germany: Dynamic Field Theory as a Framework for Understanding Embodied Cognition

* Jun Tani, Riken Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan: Neuro-Dynamic Mechanisms for Predicting and Recognizing Compositional Acts

* Jochen Triesch, Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies, Frankfurt, Germany: Self-organization Explains the Statistics and Dynamics of Synaptic Connection Strengths in Cortex

Format of workshop in a nutshell: invited presentations (see above) only, much time for disussion in plenum and breaks, extended poster session particularly aimed at young researchers and/or themes fostering discussion.

The workshop is funded through the European FP7 project Organic (http://organic.elis.ugent.be/).

For details and further background see website http://conas2012.elis.ugent.be/.

Program board:

Herbert Jaeger, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany (co-chair)

Peter F. Dominey, INSERM Lyon, France (co-chair)

Wolfgang Maass, Technical University Graz, Austria

Jean-Pierre Martens, Gent University, Belgium

Benjamin Schrauwen, Gent University, Belgium

Welf Wustlich, Planet intelligent Sytems GmbH, Schwerin, Germany