Thu 09 May 16:00: Behavioural and mechanical heterogeneities underpin cell migration essential for mouse anterior patterning
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Shankar Srinivas, Professor of Developmental Biology in the Department of Physiology Anatomy & Genetics at the University of Oxford, based at the Institute for Developmental and Regenerative Medicine.
- Thursday 09 May 2024, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room, Physiology builiding, Downing Site CB2 3EG.
- Series: Foster Talks; organiser: er454.
Fri 17 May 16:30: The Cognitive Biology of Language The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley
The cognitive revolution in the middle of the last century has transformed the ways in which we study the human mind. Curiously, when it comes to language there is a growing behaviourist trend, where it is regarded as an acquired skill, not unlike the way in which Large Language Models (LLMs) work. In contrast, linguists in the Generative Grammar tradition consider the faculty of language to be a computational system within the mind, part of the human biological endowment. This means that biological aspects of language, in particular evolution, development, and (neural) mechanisms, are open to investigation. I will discuss recent work on ‘comparative linguistics’, particularly the behavioural, neural and cognitive parallels between human language and birdsong, and what we can and cannot conclude from it. The current behaviourist view of language has led to the rapid rise of LLMs, although these AI models are actually not about language at all. Natural language appears to be unique to the human mind, and has no parallels either in animal or artificial intelligence.
The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley
- Speaker: Professor Johan Bolhuis, Utrecht University
- Friday 17 May 2024, 16:30-18:00
- Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology.
- Series: Zangwill Club; organiser: John Mollon.
Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Social and political change in diverse societies: Insights from largescale panel studies
Largescale panel studies, with stratified, random samples of a nation’s population, are relatively rare in the psychological literature. By measuring change at multiple levels over long periods of time, these studies can tell us about the relationship between individuals and the societies in which they live. This includes (1) how features of the social structure, such as inequality or deprivation, affect people and (2) how people affect the social structure (via their policy preferences and political behaviour). I will review recent research on these two key elements of societal functioning – structural effects and structural change – from two panels in very different contexts. The first is a 13-wave longitudinal study of around 20,000 New Zealanders. The second is a 3-wave study of around 160,000 people in India. I will also introduce a new panel from the UK, where we invite 500,000 people randomly sampled from the electoral register to participate in survey of social and political attitudes annually over five years. This research programme demonstrates how largescale panel data can inform theory and policy, by telling us more about how people change, and how they change their societies.
- Speaker: Nikhil Sengupta (University of Kent)
- Wednesday 24 April 2024, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology, Downing Site, Cambridge.
- Series: Social Psychology Seminar Series (SPSS); organiser: Yara Kyrychenko.
Wed 24 Apr 15:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Wednesday 24 April 2024, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology, Downing Site, Cambridge.
- Series: Social Psychology Seminar Series (SPSS); organiser: Yara Kyrychenko.
Thu 11 Apr 12:00: “Translational applications of human brain charts: from clinical to population neuroscience” The talk is in-person only and a recording is not available.
Abstract not available
The talk is in-person only and a recording is not available.
- Speaker: Dr Richard Bethlehem, University of Cambridge
- Thursday 11 April 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, Forvie Site.
- Series: Clinical Neurosciences Seminars; organiser: Louise Massara.
Thu 11 Apr 12:00: “Translational applications of human brain charts: from clinical to population neuroscience”
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Richard Bethlehem, University of Cambridge
- Thursday 11 April 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, Forvie Site.
- Series: Clinical Neurosciences Seminars; organiser: Louise Massara.
Mon 03 Jun 15:00: The evolution of Alzheimer’s disease in the aging brain
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Bill Jagust (UC Berkeley)
- Monday 03 June 2024, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 06 Jun 14:00: The role of reward in language learning
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Saloni Krishnan (Royal Holloway)
- Thursday 06 June 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 30 May 14:00: The problem with mental health awareness
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Lucy Foulkes (U. of Oxford)
- Thursday 30 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 23 May 14:00: How does the human brain recognize faces?
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Bruno Rossion (U. of Lorraine)
- Thursday 23 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 16 May 14:00: Sleep to forget unwanted memories
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Scott Cairney (U. of York)
- Thursday 16 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 09 May 14:00: Recognition memory, its neural bases, and the role of ‘parietal’ attention allocation in its function
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Daniela Montaldi (U. of Manchester)
- Thursday 09 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 02 May 14:00: Paranoia: My life understanding and treating extreme mistrust
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dan Freeman (U. of Oxford)
- Thursday 02 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Thu 25 Apr 14:00: Early phase neuroplasticity induced by transcranial ultrasound stimulation
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Elsa Fouragnan (U. of Plymouth)
- Thursday 25 April 2024, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge - Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chaucer Club; organiser: Vicky Collins.
Wed 17 Apr 11:30: 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.
- Speaker: Miriam Martini, Karolinska Institutet
- Wednesday 17 April 2024, 11:30-12:30
- Venue: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81268825017?pwd=dndNSE9selNDTktIUGNNejZKZDFVUT09 .
- Series: ARClub Talks; organiser: Simon Braschi.
Thu 28 Mar 12:00: “Tools for studying variation in the dark genome”
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Michael Eberle, PacBio Computational Biology Group
- Thursday 28 March 2024, 12:00-13:00
- Venue: Seminar Room, John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, Forvie Site.
- Series: Clinical Neurosciences Seminars; organiser: Louise Massara.
Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Political Polarization, Social Norms, and Sorting: An Agent-based Social Sampling Model In person only
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
- Speaker: Gordon Brown (University of Warwick)
- Wednesday 20 March 2024, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology, Downing Site, Cambridge.
- Series: Social Psychology Seminar Series (SPSS); organiser: Yara Kyrychenko.
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.
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.
- Speaker: Eva Loth, King's College London
- Wednesday 20 March 2024, 11:30-12:30
- Venue: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81268825017?pwd=dndNSE9selNDTktIUGNNejZKZDFVUT09 .
- Series: ARClub Talks; organiser: Simon Braschi.
Tue 19 Mar 10:00: 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.
- Speaker: Seán Froudist-Walsh, U Bristol
- Tuesday 19 March 2024, 10:00-11:00
- Venue: CBL Seminar Room, Engineering Department, 4th floor Baker building.
- Series: Computational Neuroscience; organiser: Guillaume Hennequin.
Fri 15 Mar 16:30: The role of affective relevance in emotion, attention, and memory The host for this talk is Deborah Talmi
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
- Speaker: Professor David Sander, Swiss Center for Affective Science, Geneva
- Friday 15 March 2024, 16:30-18:00
- Venue: Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Department of Psychology.
- Series: Zangwill Club; organiser: John Mollon.