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Translational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab

 
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A superlist combining individual seminars and series from other lists on talks.cam. These Neuroscience-themed seminars will be advertised throughout the relevant interest group in Cambridge.
Updated: 46 min 28 sec ago

Thu 06 Jun 14:00: The role of reward in language learning

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:15
The role of reward in language learning

Abstract not available

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Thu 16 May 14:00: Sleep to forget unwanted memories

Tue, 26/03/2024 - 13:13
Sleep to forget unwanted memories

Abstract not available

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Wed 17 Apr 11:30: Sex differences in co-occurring conditions among autistic individuals

Tue, 19/03/2024 - 09:01
Sex differences in co-occurring conditions among autistic individuals

Co-occurring conditions, both psychiatric and somatic, substantially impact autistic individuals’ quality of life. Understanding the association between autism and co-occurring conditions and identifying factors that influence this association is a leading priority for autistic individuals. Across different cohort studies we explored the association between sex and co-occurring conditions using Swedish nationwide register data. We investigated sex differences in psychiatric diagnoses preceding a diagnosis of autism, their association with age at autism diagnosis and their stability post autism diagnosis. Moreover, we examined mental health problems and psychiatric hospitalization in autistic females and males aged 16 to 25 compared to nonautistic individuals. Lastly, we explored how somatic conditions in childhood (SCCs) are associated with psychiatric conditions in young adulthood (PCAs), and how psychiatric conditions in childhood (PCCs) are associated with somatic conditions in young adulthood (SCAs). I will make the case that autistic people, especially women, have considerable mental health needs.

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Thu 28 Mar 12:00: “Tools for studying variation in the dark genome”

Mon, 18/03/2024 - 11:45
“Tools for studying variation in the dark genome”

Abstract not available

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Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Political Polarization, Social Norms, and Sorting: An Agent-based Social Sampling Model In person only

Mon, 18/03/2024 - 10:18
Political Polarization, Social Norms, and Sorting: An Agent-based Social Sampling Model

I will describe a cognitive model of social influence and apply it to several social network phenomena including polarization, social contagion, and sorting/issue alignment. We use agent-based modelling to link individual-level and network-level effects. Social norms and individuals’ private attitudes are assumed to be represented as distributions rather than single points. People located within a social network observe the behaviour of their network neighbours and hence infer the social distribution of particular attitudes and behaviours. It is assumed that (a) people dislike behaving in ways that are extreme within their neighbourhood social norm (social extremeness aversion assumption), and hence tend to conform and (b) people prefer to behave consistently with their own underlying attitudes (authenticity preference assumption) hence minimizing dissonance. Expressed attitudes and behaviour reflect a utility-maximizing compromise between these opposing principles. A number of polarisation-related social network phenomena emerge in the model. Sorting (increased correlation of attitudes) is shown to emerge only when agents seek to differentiate themselves from an outgroup as well as align with an ingroup.

This talk is in person only and hosted by David Young and Lee De-Wit.

In person only

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Wed 20 Mar 11:30: From precision medicine for autism to precision support for neurodivergent people: Why we need to consider dynamic interactions between brain, body and the social environment to better understand each other.

Fri, 15/03/2024 - 17:18
From precision medicine for autism to precision support for neurodivergent people: Why we need to consider dynamic interactions between brain, body and the social environment to better understand each other.

Over the past decade, two approaches have substantially influenced the direction of autism research: precision medicine in psychiatry and the neurodiversity paradigm. Precision medicine aims to improve early detection, diagnosis and prognosis, as well as develop mechanism-based therapies tailored to individual needs/ characteristics using biomarkers. EU-AIMS and AIMS -2-TRIALS are two linked European consortia that have been at the forefront of this global effort. In this talk, I will share some reflections on progress and challenges. Significant advancements include larger, comprehensively characterised cohorts from infancy to adulthood, new methods to make predictions about individuals and identify subgroups and increased methodological rigour. However, in our studies, we did not identify single modality markers that have sufficient accuracy for any clinical application. This may be due to both methodological factors, including granularity and reliability of measures, and conceptual factors, such as the predominant reductionist approach, which seeks to parse complex issues into simpler, more tractable units. By studying particular processes in isolation (e.g., social or sensory processes) we often neglect their interactions, while the focus on individual-level markers has led us to divorce the (autistic) person from their social environment.

In parallel, the neurodiversity paradigm has highlighted the need to shift away from deficit models to understanding diversity in perception, cognition and experiences. It emphasised the role of social and contextual factors in strengths and disabilities and advocated for active involvement of autistic people as research collaborators in defining priorities and conduct of research.

Drawing upon insights from system biology, developmental psychology and social sciences I outline an integrative approach. It aims to understand the dynamic interaction between biological (brain, body) and social mechanisms (stress, stigma, protective factors) to gain a fuller understanding of strengths and difficulties of neurodivergent people in different conditions and contexts.

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Tue 19 Mar 10:00: Neurotransmitter receptor gradients: gateways for subcortical routing of cortex-wide dynamics during cognition

Fri, 15/03/2024 - 14:52
Neurotransmitter receptor gradients: gateways for subcortical routing of cortex-wide dynamics during cognition

Recent advances in connectomics and neurophysiology make it possible to probe whole-brain mechanisms of cognition and behavior. However, as yet, few models in computational neuroscience have tackled the mechanisms underlying highly distributed neural activity during cognition. In this talk I will describe our anatomy-led approach to developing cortex-wide models of neural dynamics during cognitive tasks and our recent anatomical findings of graded expression of neurotransmitter receptors in the cortex. I will highlight our investigations into how inputs from the thalamus and neuromodulatory systems may shift the cortical dynamical landscape, and how this may confer flexibility on distributed cognitive functions such as conscious perception and working memory.

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Fri 15 Mar 16:30: The role of affective relevance in emotion, attention, and memory The host for this talk is Deborah Talmi

Wed, 13/03/2024 - 16:13
The role of affective relevance in emotion, attention, and memory

The talk will start by presenting the approach that we recently called “affectivism”: the idea that the inclusion of affective processes in models of mind, brain and behaviour not only explains affective phenomena but, critically, further enhances the power of such models to explain cognition and behaviour. Consistently with this approach, we will then discuss evidence that “concern relevance” is a potential amygdala-based mechanism allowing to explain several facilitatory effects of emotion on attention, learning and memory.

The host for this talk is Deborah Talmi

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Thu 18 Apr 12:00: The sound of noise in auditory midbrain and cortex

Tue, 12/03/2024 - 16:00
The sound of noise in auditory midbrain and cortex

The environment surrounding each of us, is made of myriad of sounds, images or odours, in combinations that are continuously changing, often in predictable ways. Our brain readily detects and learns these patterns, often implicitly, independently of its immediate relevance. This form of learning, known as statistical learning, is essential for basic brain functions such as, for example, the segregation of stimuli into background and foreground, or the detection of unexpected changes that might predict danger.

Focusing on the auditory system, we study how cortico-subcortical loops detect and code the patterns in the acoustic environment. We use a combination of behavioural paradigms, electrophysiology, and opto- and chemogenetic manipulations.

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Mon 18 Mar 12:30: Studies with Single Subjects or Large Numbers of Volunteers - Why, & How?

Tue, 12/03/2024 - 15:13
Studies with Single Subjects or Large Numbers of Volunteers - Why, & How?

Speaker: Wietske van der Zwaag (Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam)

Bio: Dr Wietske van der Zwaag received her PhD in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, in 2006, working with one of the first European 7T scanners. She subsequently worked at the Centre d’Imagerie Biomédicale (CIBM) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) from 2007 to 2015. Van der Zwaag joined the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging in 2015, shortly after its opening. In 2019, she formed her own group there, working at the boundary between MR development and neurosciences. The group’s research is centred on best harnessing the strong points of 7T in neuroimaging with a special interest in functional MRI of finely organized brain structures, such as the human cerebellum.

Title: Studies with Single Subjects or Large Numbers of Volunteers – Why, & How?

Abstract: In the functional MRI field, datasets continue to grow. Interestingly, there are two different trends: There are currently multiple efforts towards collection of datasets with a huge number of participants, to capture the variance in a population, or to use the power of massive averaging to discover subtle brain function patterns. A second trend is towards exhaustive sampling of a single participant (or a few), arguing that measurements of one brain likely generalize to most other brains. Dense sampling allows experiments with either many conditions or extremely detailed images, exploring different types of variance. This talk will discuss both trends.

Venue: MRC CBU West Wing Seminar Room and Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82385113580?pwd=RmxIUmphQW9Ud1JBby9nTDQzR0NRdz09

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Wed 13 Mar 11:30: Neural Sociometrics: Precision assessment of parent-child brain-behaviour interaction dynamics

Fri, 08/03/2024 - 16:58
Neural Sociometrics: Precision assessment of parent-child brain-behaviour interaction dynamics

During early life, healthy neurodevelopment depends on warm, responsive and closely-coordinated social interactions between infants and caregivers. These rich multidimensional experiences act through multiple sensory and motor pathways to orchestrate healthy maturation of the neonatal brain, mind and body. Conversely, adverse early life experiences (including abuse or neglect) seed vulnerabilities for poor cognition and emotional instability throughout the lifespan. Despite the pivotal role played by caregiver interactions during early development, we still lack precision tools and models that can accurately and comprehensively capture the complex dynamics within the child’s “interactome”. Here, I will discuss neural sociometrics – real-time multi-sensor high-dimensional imaging of adult-infant dyadic social interactive behaviour and neurophysiology – as a deep phenotyping tool for early screening and precision intervention. Early risk identification and mitigation, paired with precision therapeutics, could fundamentally alter a child’s development trajectory toward lifelong mental wellbeing and productivity.

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Wed 06 Mar 15:00: Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

Mon, 04/03/2024 - 13:38
Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

This talk is open to the general public.

Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675

Passcode: yKwfhf

Yan Xia (Aalto University):

Title: Integrated or Segregated? User Behavior Change after Cross-Party Interactions on Reddit

Abstract: It is a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbates political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo chambers, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether users will actually become more integrated or instead more segregated following such interactions on real social media platforms. We fill this gap by inspecting how users change their community participation after receiving a cross-party reply in the U.S. politics discussion on Reddit. More specifically, we investigate if their participation increases in communities of the opposing party, or in communities of their own party. We find that receiving a reply is significantly associated with increased user activity in both types of communities; when the reply is a cross-party one, the activity boost in cross-party communities is weaker. Nevertheless, compared with the case of receiving no reply, users are still significantly more likely to increase their participation in cross-party communities after receiving a cross-party reply. Our results therefore hint at a depolarization effect of cross-party interactions that better integrate users into discussions of the opposing side.

James Ackland (Cambridge):

Title: The Geographical Psychology of Ideological Misalignment

Abstract: Political psychologists have debated whether ideology is constructed from the top-down, by national-level parties and elites forming packages of beliefs to “sell” to voters (Downs, 1957); or from the bottom-up, by voters themselves aligning policy preferences with more fundamental social and psychological needs (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010). In this work, I assume that both processes coexist, and show how their interaction can explain some of the phenomena that characterise our modern politics. Of particular interest are places where bottom-up preferences are not matched by the top-down political offering. In Western Europe, this often means places where social conservatism exists alongside left-leaning economic preferences, in contrast to the pairing of social conservatism with a free-market ideology at the national level. In such places, I hypothesise that populist politics will be more successful, as measured by voting behaviour and political attitudes.

Nikolay Petrov (Cambridge):

Title: Limited ability of LLMs to simulate human psychological behaviours: an in-depth psychometric analysis

Abstract: The humanlike responses of Large Language Models (LLMs) have prompted social scientists to investigate whether LLMs can be used to simulate human participants in experiments, opinion polls and surveys. Of central interest in this line of research has been mapping out the psychological profile of LLMs by prompting them to respond to standardized questionnaires. The conflicting findings of this research are unsurprising given that going from LLMs’ text responses on surveys to mapping out underlying, or latent, traits is no easy task. To address this, we use psychometrics, the science of psychological measurement. In this study, we prompt OpenAI’s flagship models, GPT -3.5 and GPT -4, by asking them to assume different personas and respond to a range of standardized measures of personality constructs. We used two kinds of persona descriptions: either generic (5 random person descriptions) or specific (mostly demographics of actual humans from a large-scale human dataset). We found that using generic persona descriptions, more powerful models, such as GPT -4, show promising abilities to respond coherently, and similar to human norms, but both models failed miserably in assuming specific personas, described using demographic variables. We conclude that, currently, when LLMs are prompted to simulate specific human(s), they cannot represent latent traits and thus their responses fail to generalize across tasks.

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Thu 14 Mar 16:00: Epigenetic priming of embryonic cell lineages in the mammalian epiblast

Mon, 04/03/2024 - 13:23
Epigenetic priming of embryonic cell lineages in the mammalian epiblast

Miguel Torres trained in Drosophila Genetics during his PhD (1991) with Dr. Lucas Sánchez (CIB-CSIC, Madrid) and later in Mouse Developmental Genetics during his Postdoc at the MPI with Dr Peter Gruss. He established an independent research group at the National Center for Biotechnology, CSIC , Madrid in 1996 and moved in 2007 to CNIC where he now coordinates the Cardiovascular Regeneration Program. His group has a strong focus on understanding organ development and regeneration. Dr Torres group characterized the role of homeobox genes and signaling pathways in establishing positional information along the limb proximo-distal axis during development and regeneration. A second topic of interest has been understanding the role of cell death in embryonic development. The group demonstrated the conservation of cell death pathways in metazoan evolution and demonstrated the relevance of cell death and cell competition in mammalian tissue homeostasis and regeneration. The group has also developed clonal analysis strategies and live imaging tools that allowed defining new lineage relationships and tissue dynamics in limb and cardiovascular development.

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Cambridge Memory Meeting 2015

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