TICS

Talks in Cognitive Science

at the University of Massachusetts at Boston

Which subject of scientific investigation could be more fascinating and challenging than the human brain? Researchers of various academic backgrounds have joined the endeavor of cognitive science, working in interdisciplinary teams to gain a better understanding of the functional structures and processes in the brain that make us who we are.

In the TICS colloquium series at UMass Boston, cognitive scientists from the Boston area and beyond present their current research to an interdisciplinary audience and discuss their findings and conclusions. Due to the comprehensible style of TICS presentations, anyone interested in the human brain can benefit from attending a talk, even without specific background knowledge in a particular discipline. Everybody is welcome to come to TICS, listen to a talk, and discuss the findings in a broad context. No registration, no fee.

In the current semester, the TICS meetings take place every few weeks (see schedule below) on Tuesdays or Thursdays at UMass Boston. Directions to UMass Boston are here, and a campus map can be found here. The duration of presentations is between 45 and 60 minutes, followed by a discussion. Afterwards there is time for informal exchange of ideas while refreshments are served.

Please take a look at the TICS schedule below for information on dates, presenters, and abstracts of talks. If you have any questions or if you would like to present your research at TICS, please contact Marc Pomplun, Erik Blaser, or Zsuzsa Kaldy. See you at the next TICS meeting!

 

 

Spring 2012

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Wed., Feb. 1, 2:30 pm, S-3-143 Chia-Chien Wu, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University The Strategies of Saccadic Planning: From Visual Inspection to Visual Search
Wed., Feb. 29, 2:00 pm, S-3-143 Joseph Schmidt, Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, New York How Search Performance is Affected by the Guiding Representation
Wed., Mach 21, 2:30 pm, S-3-143 Jean-Remy Hochmann, Department of Psychology, Harvard University Early Linguistic Representations
Wed., April 11, 3:00 pm, S-3-143 Sudha Arunachalam, Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, Boston University The slithy toves did gyre and gimble: How toddlers use linguistic information to learn new words

 

 

Fall 2011

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Wed., October 19, 1:00 pm, S-3-143 Ildikó Király, Cognitive Psychology Department, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary Rational Imitation or Relevance Guided Imitation?

 

 

Spring 2011

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Wed., March 23, 3:00pm, S-3-143 Sara Cordes, Department of Psychology, Boston College The Young Numerical Mind
Fri., May 13, 1:00pm, S-3-143 Hsueh-Cheng (Nick) Wang, Department of Computer Science, UMass Boston Singular Value Decomposition is a Valid Predictor of Stroke Importance in Reading Chinese

 

 

Fall 2010

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Tues., October 5, 3:15pm, S-3-143 Heiko Hecht, Psychology, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany The Mystery of Gaze Perception and its Clinical Application
Thurs., October 14, 3:00pm, S-3-143 Rachel Wu, Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University College London
Learning (to Learn) from Attention Cues during Infancy
 

 

 

Spring 2010

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Mon., April 12, 2:30pm, S-3-143 Tyler Garaas, Computer Science, UMass Boston Real-Time Active Robotic Vision using Biologically Inspired Neural Models (Dissertation Defense)
Wed., May 5, 1:00pm, S-3-143 Melissa Le­Hoa Võ, Visual Attention Lab, Harvard Medical School
 		 Gaze Guidance by Scene Semantics and Syntax

 

 

 

Fall 2009

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Thurs., Dec. 3, 1:00pm, Healey Lower Level P2 Tilke Judd, Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT Learning to Predict Where People Look
Thurs., Dec. 10, 10:00am, Healey 11-0011a (11th floor) Alex Hwang, Computer Science, UMass Boston Modeling the Control of Attention by Visual and Semantic Factors in Real-World Scenes (Dissertation Defense)

 

 

Spring 2009

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Tues., February 10, 2:30pm, room S-3-028  Koleen McCrink, Department of Psychology, Harvard University Mathematical Operations Throughout the Life Span

 

 

Fall 2008

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Fri., October 17, 3:00pm, room S-3-028  Michael Dorr, Institute for Neuro- and Bioinformatics, University of Luebeck, Germany Eye Movement Modelling and Gaze Guidance
Wed., November 12, 3:00pm, room S-3-028 Patricia Ganea, Department of Psychology, Boston University Children's Use of Language to Update Mental Representations
Tues., December 2, 2:30pm, room S-3-028 David Melcher, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy A common sensorimotor map underlying counting, visual-spatial working memory and trans-saccadic perception

 

 

Spring 2008

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Thurs., Feb. 28, 3:00pm, room S-3-028  Piers Howe, Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital
Harvard Medical School		 Static Illusions: Why Moving Objects Can Appear to be Stationary
Thurs., April 10, 3:00pm, room S-3-028 Hugo Bruggeman, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University Optic Flow: A Step in the Right Direction
Wed., April 23, 1:00pm, room S-3-028 Nichola Rice, Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University Grasping How We Grasp: A "Virtual Lesion" Approach

 

 

Fall 2007

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Wed., Oct. 31, 3:30pm, room S-3-028 Dezso Nemeth, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Mental Grammar and Implicit Learning
Wed., Nov. 14, 3:30pm, room S-3-028  Ruth Rosenholtz, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Measuring Visual Clutter
Wed., Dec. 5, 3:30pm, room S-3-028  Richard Griffin, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University Social Perception in Toddlers and Preschoolers with Autism
Wed., Dec. 12, 3:30pm, room S-3-028  Riccardo Pedersini, Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital
Harvard Medical School		 Biased preferences: Measurement of objective and subjective object features

 

 

Spring 2007

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Mon., Mar. 26, 3pm, room S-3-028 Anina N. Rich, Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital Synaesthesia: An unusual perspective on perception
Wed., May 9, 3pm, room S-3-028 Gang Luo, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston Eye Movement Control and Visual Stability: New Findings in Saccadic Behaviors of People with Tunnel Vision

 

 

Fall 2006

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Mon., Oct. 30, 4:30pm, room S-3-028 Verionca Gross, Department of Psychology, Boston University Synesthesia: Beyond Just Proof
Mon., Dec. 11, 3pm, room S-3-028 Dhanraj Vishwanath, Department of Psychology, Rochester Institute of Technology What Pictures Tell Us about Surface Perception

 

 

Spring 2006

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Tues., Mar. 7, 4pm, room S-3-028 Evan M. Palmer, Visual Attention Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital Occlusion, Illusion and Spatiotemporal Fusion
Thurs., Mar. 23, 4pm, room S-3-028 Erik Cheries, Department of Psychology, Yale University Some Surprising Limits on Infants’ Persisting Object Representations
Thurs., April 20, 4pm, room S-3-028 Jozsef Fiser, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University How do We Learn to See?

 

 

Fall 2005

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Tues., Oct. 25, 5:15pm, room S-3-028 Arash Afraz, Department of Psychology, Harvard University How does a Split Brain See the World?
Thurs., Nov. 17, 4:15pm, room S-3-028 Rebecca Saxe,  Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 		Other People's Thoughts in Your Brain
Thurs., Dec. 1, 4pm, room S-3-028 Yigal Agam, Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University Imitation of Multi-Component Movement Sequences

 

 

Spring 2005

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Tues., Feb. 15, 3:30pm, room M-4-603 Steven Franconeri, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia The Magic Number 4 in Visual Attention
Wed., April 13, 2pm, room S-1-089 Marc Pomplun, Computer Science, UMass Boston Building Advanced Gaze-Controlled Human-Computer Interfaces
Thurs., April 21, 4pm, room W-1-055 Markus Guhe, CogWorks Laboratories, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute New Approaches for Detecting Workload and Stress

 

 

Fall 2004

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Thurs., Oct. 14, 4pm, room M-2-417 Deborah Kelemen, Department of Psychology, Boston University Are Children "Intuitive Theists?" Teleological Reasoning about Purpose in Nature
Thurs., Oct. 28, 4pm, room M-2-417 Norbert Kopco, Hearing Research Center, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University Cocktail Parties for Cats and Humans: Spatial Hearing in Noisy Environments
Thurs., Dec. 2, 4pm, room M-2-417 Aude Oliva, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT Recognition of the Gist of the Scene from Spatial Envelope Properties
Mon., Dec. 13, 5:30pm, room W-1-006 Kobi Gal, Artificial Intelligence Research Group, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University A Model for Reasoning about People's Social Preferences

 

 

Spring 2004

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Thurs., Feb. 26, 4pm, room M-4-272 Zsuzsa Kaldy, Department of Psychology, UMass Boston What was that? The development of visual working memory in infants
Thurs., April 8, 4pm, room M-2-205 Leher Singh, Sargent College, Boston University Infants' formation of lexical categories: Effects of variability and constancy
Thurs., April 22, 4pm, room M-2-205 Massimiliano Ciaramita, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University Basic-level classes recognition in a broad-coverage ontology
Tues., May 4, 4pm, room M-1-428 Arash Fazl, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University A Model of Visual Object Recognition in the Presence of Active Eye Movements

 

 

Fall 2003

Date and Room Presenter Topic
Thurs., Oct. 9, 4pm, W-2-127 Elena Carbone, Visual Attention Lab, UMass Boston Attention and the perception of dynamic stimuli: Old and new misperceptions
Thurs., Oct. 23, 4pm, W-1-006 Nayantara Santhi, Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital Visual Attention is Modulated by Circadian Phase and the Sleep Homeostat
Thurs., Nov. 20, 4pm, W-1-006 Marek Kubicki, Radiology Department, Brigham & Women’s Hospital White Matter Abnormalities in Schizophrenia
Thurs., Dec. 11, 4pm, M-1-428 Marc Pomplun, Computer Science, UMass Boston Taking a Close Look at Visual Attention with the Gaze-Contingent Display Paradigm

 

 

Spring 2003

Date Presenter Topic
Tue., Feb. 25, 4pm Arash Fazl, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University Tactile Discrimination Task is not Disturbed by Thalamic Electrical Stimulation
Tue., March 11, 4pm S. Duke Han, Department of Psychology, UMass Boston Associative Memory in Chronic Schizophrenia: A Connectionist Model
Tue., March 25, 4pm Emily Grossman, Vision Sciences Lab, Harvard University Brain areas involved in the perception of biological motion.
Tue., April 29, 4pm Fulvio Domini, Brain Science, Brown University 3D structure perceived from dynamic information: A new theory
Tue.,  May 13, 4pm Scott Beardsley, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University Motion Pattern Processing in MSTd: A Computational Model

 

 

Fall 2002

Date Presenter Topic
Wed., Sep. 18, 2:30pm Marc Pomplun, Computer Science, UMass Boston Visual Scanning Strategies
Wed., Oct. 2, 2:30pm Erik Blaser, Psychology, UMass Boston Attention to Visual Surfaces
Wed., Oct. 16, 2:30pm Arash Yazdanbakhsh, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University Investigating the Mechanisms Underlying Visual Illusions: Munker-White-like Illusions without T-Junctions
Wed., Oct. 30, 2:30pm Arash Yazdanbakhsh, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University New attractor states for synchronous activity in synfire chains with excitatory and inhibitory coupling
Wed., Nov. 20, 2:30pm Irene M. Pepperberg, MIT Media Lab and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona. In Search of King Solomon's Ring: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots