Distinguished Speaker Series

Curiosity and information demand: how we can study them and why we should care A rapidly growing literature has recently emphasized the importance of our sense-making instincts, including complex investigative

Abstract: Swarms of insects, schools of fish and flocks of birds display an impressive variety of collective movement patterns that emerge from interactions among group members. These puzzling phenomena raise

Giovanni Pezzulo is a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council in Rome, Italy. His research centers on the neuronal and computational mechanisms of predictive

Seeing by moving: the indissoluble bond between perception and action Establishing a representation of space is a major goal of sensory systems.  Spatial information, however, is not always explicit in

I will present a model of continuous-time opinion dynamics for an arbitrary number of agents that communicate over a network and form real-valued opinions about an arbitrary number of options. 

ABSTRACT: Self-preservation is embodied in our brain’s circuitry: we seek food when hungry, warmth when cold, and mates when lusty. In the evolution of the mammalian brain, circuitry for regulating one’s

Speaker: Peter Dayan, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, https://www.mpg.de/12309357/biologische-kybernetik-dayan Hosted by Henning Sprekeler; moderated by Robert Tjarko Lange Peril, Prudence and Planning as Risk, Avoidance and Worry Risk occupies

It is a commonly held assumption that the fovea is where the interesting action occurs. To scrutinize this assumption, we conducted a series of experiments that addressed the following question: How important are the

Recent years have seen a considerable surge of research on interest-based engagement, examining how and why people are engaged in activities without relying on extrinsic rewards. However, the field of

Abstract: In current debates over deep-neural-network-based AI, deep learning researchers have adopted the mantle of philosophical empiricism and associationism, and its critics have taken up the side of philosophical rationalism

Postponed to a later date (to be assessed) More info coming soon!  

Abstract: Humans spend a lifetime learning, storing and refining a repertoire of motor memories. However, it is unknown what principle underlies the way our continuous stream of sensorimotor experience is