News

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.

For further information, click here.

Guest speaker: Guillaume Gibert

Date: Tuesday 31st January, 11 am, in the SBRI conference room.

From Talking Heads to Robots.

During this presentation, I will describe some of my past research activities in human-machine interaction. More specifically, I will present the first complete 3D text-to-Cued Speech synthesizer that can translate any text input into congruent face and hand movements to produce Cued Speech (i.e. a manual code developed to complement lipreading for hearing impaired people). I will also describe some aspects of Brain-computer Interfaces (BCI) and more specifically the P300 Speller paradigm and modifications/improvements we made. Then, I will present some evaluation methods and new features we developed for autonomous avatars. Finally, I will explain what will be my research activities during the next 3 years at SBRI.

Ugo Borello will give a lecture at the International VIII Course on Mouse Neuromorphologic Development in Murcia (26-29 January). He will rehearse on Monday 23rd in the SBRI Conference room at 1pm.

Guest speaker: Wendy Suzuki from NYU

Date: Friday January 27th, at 2pm at the ISC conference room.

Integrating what and when across the primate medial temporal lobe.

Date: December 20th, 10am

Place: SBRI conference room

Teams Cooper and Dominey will present their current work, the new members and their coming projects.

The brevity of G1 is an intrinsic determinant of naive pluripotency

Date: December 19th, 2pm in the SBRI conference

Jury:

Daniel ABERDAM, Directeur de recherche Inserm - Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis

Hélène BOEUF, Directrice de recherche CNRS - Unversité Bordeaux 2

Germain GILLET, Professeur des Universités - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Pierre JURDIC, Directeur de recherche Inserm - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Pierre SAVATIER, Directeur de recherche Inserm - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Assistance Médicale à la Procréation et Méthylation de l’ADN : Évaluation de l’impact de la vitrification et de la maturation in vitro des ovocytes humains, et de la culture prolongée des embryons humains pré-implantatoires

Date: December 16th, 2.30pm

Place: Salle du Conseil - Faculté de Médecine Lyon Est - Lyon 8ème

Jury:

Patricia FAUQUE - Professeur des Universités, Université de Bourgogne

Jean-François GUERIN - Professeur des Universités, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

Hélène JAMMES - Chargée de recherche INRA, Jouy-en-Josas

Annick LEFEVRE - Chargée de recherche INSERM, Lyon

Guest speaker: XIao-Jing Wang, Professor of neurobiology, physics and psychology, Director of Swartz Program in Theoretical neurobiology - Yale University, USA

Date: Friday, December 9th 10.30 am

A cognitive-type cortical microcircuit: decision making and working memory.

Guest speaker: Zoltan Molnar, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience - Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics - University of Oxford

Date: December 8th, 3.30 in the SBRI conference room

The earliest cortical circuits

Zoltán Molnár’s research focus is on the cerebral cortical development.  It seeks to decipher how cerebral cortical neural cell fates are determined (with special attention in the earliest generated cells in the subplate and in the large pyramidal cells of layer 5), and how development of cortical functional specialisation (arealization) is determined by genetic and environmental factors.  The arealization of the mammalian cortex is believed to be controlled by a combination of intrinsic factors that are expressed in the cortex, and external signals, some of which are mediated through thalamic input. Members of Zoltán Molnár’s research group study the development of the cortical connectivity in this context.  Recent studies have identified families of molecules that are involved in thalamic axon growth, pathfinding and cortical target selection, and the mechanisms of cytoarchitectonic differentiation imposed by thalamic projections on the developing cortex. Greater understanding of these basic neurobiological problems could solve numerous questions relating to cortical development as well as to the prevention and treatment of many neurological and psychiatric disorders (e.g. childhood epilepsy, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism) that affect millions of people of all ages at tremendous cost to the national economy.

Coordination of neuronal proliferation and migration during corticogenesis: role of p27kip1.

Date: December 9th, 1pm

Jury:

Pr. Germain Gillet, Centre Léon Bérard - Lyon

Dr. Sonia Garel, Brain development and plasticity - ENS, Paris

Dr. Zoltan Molnar, Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics - Oxford

Dr. Laurent NGuyen, GIGA - Liège

Dr. Henry Kennedy, SBRI - Bron

Dr. Colette Dehay, SBRI - Bron

Date: 4 - 6 Janvier

Place: Centre des Congrès de Lyon

Les STIC sont, depuis plusieurs années, des thèmes majeurs soutenus par l'ANR qui souhaite rendre plus visibles les retombées de ses programmes. C'est pourquoi l'ANR a fait évoluer ses colloques.
Ce Grand Colloque STIC (qui se tient tous les 2 ans) rassemblera les projets financés par les appels à projets de l'ANR, démarrés entre 2006 et 2009 et se terminant dans la période fin 2011-début 2012. Il sera l'occasion de présenter les résultats et les avancées de projets d'excellence sur ce domaine thématique très vaste, soutenus dès la création de l'ANR. La plupart des projets présentés ont été menés en partenariat entre des laboratoires de recherche publics et des entreprises. Ce colloque s'adresse donc aux chercheurs des communautés concernées mais également aux entreprises qui peuvent bénéficier d'une occasion de mieux connaître les travaux à fort potentiel de valorisation menés dans les laboratoires publics et également d'y trouver des partenaires pour mener leurs activités de R&D.

Plus de 160 projets issus des programmes STIC Robotique, Audiovisuel et Multimédia, Contenus et Interactions (CONTINT), Masses de Données, Technologies Logicielles, Systèmes Embarqués et Grandes Infrastructures (ARPEGE), Télécommunications, Réseaux du Futur et Services (VERSO), Défis, Architecture du futur, Calcul intensif et simulation, sécurité, ainsi que d'autres appels, tels que Systèmes complexes (SYSCOMM), et les projets STIC financés par les appels à projets blancs et jeunes chercheurs du domaine "non thématique", présenteront leurs résultats dans 6 sessions thématiques parallèles, réunissant ainsi 700 partenaires de projets STIC financés par l'ANR depuis 2006.

À ces sessions d'exposés scientifiques s'ajoutera une exposition de posters et des démonstrations qui sera l'occasion d'échanges et de rencontres riches et fructueuses.

Pour plus d'informations, cliquez ici.

Date: December 8th at 4pm at the ISC conference room at 67 boulevard Pinel in Bron

Guest speaker: Thilo van Eimeren, Christian-Albrechts University, Department of Neurology Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital, Kiel, Germany

Neuroimaging of repetitive impulse-associated behaviours in Parkinson's disease

For more details in German, click here.

Date: December 7th at 2pm at the ISC conference room at 67 boulevard Pinel in Bron

Guest speaker: Mark Hallett, Section Medical Neurology Branch, NINDS NIH, Bethesda , USA

Focal hand dystonia: Abnormalities in selective motor control and plasticity.

Dr. Hallett obtained his A.B. and M.D. at Harvard University, had his internship in Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and his Neurology training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He had fellowships in neurophysiology at the NIH and in the Department of Neurology, Institute of Psychiatry in London, where he worked with C. David Marsden. Before coming to NIH in 1984, Dr. Hallett was the Chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is currently Chief of the Medical Neurology Branch and Chief of its Human Motor Control Section. He is now Editor-in-Chief of World Neurology, the newsletter of the World Federation of Neurology and Associate Editor of Brain. He has been President of the Movement Disorder Society and Vice-President of the American Academy of Neurology. Among many awards, in 2005 he won the Movement Disorder Research Award of the American Academy of Neurology and in 2007 he won the Wilhelm-Erb-GedenkmÜnze of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fÜr Neurologie. His research activities focus on the physiology of human voluntary movement and its pathophysiology in disordered voluntary movement and involuntary movement.

Click here for further information on Mark Hallett.

Date: November 30th, from 9 to 6pm

Place: Assemblée nationale, Salle Lamartine, Paris 7ème

Nommés rapporteurs d’une étude sur les enjeux scientifiques, médicaux et éthiques des nouvelles technologies d’exploration et de traitement du cerveau, MM. Alain Claeys et Jean-Sébastien Vialatte ont organisé une audition publique le 29 juin dernier pour dresser un état des lieux des principales avancées scientifiques, technologiques et médicales en cours dans ce domaine. La présente audition publique vise à cerner les enjeux éthiques et juridiques qu’implique l’utilisation de ces technologies. Il s’agit de débattre des dérives potentielles en évaluant les bénéfices et les risques inhérents à ces technologies.

Parmi les intervenants: Andreas Kleinschmidt, Jean-Claude Ameisen, Angela Sirigu...

Inscription obligatoire

Pour plus d'information, cliquez ici.

Date: November 17-19

Place: EMBL Advanced Training Centre - Heidelberg, Germany

Howard Cooper will be teaching a course on "melanopsin: a non-visual photopigment in the human retina" at the 13th international EMBL PhD symposium.

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is a leading institute for research in molecular life sciences. The International EMBL PhD Symposium aims to provide young researchers from different international institutes with an opportunity to interact with leading scientists in an informal and relaxed environment.

The 13th International EMBL PhD Symposium will be spread over three days that will include many exciting talks from established scientists, as well as short talks from young researchers, poster sessions, and a panel discussion. During these three days, there will be many opportunities for participants to interact with our distinguished speakers as well as with each other, since meals and breaks as well as drink sessions will be included in the programme.

For further details, click here.

Guest speaker: Boris Burle, équipe chronométrie et dynamique cérébrale, laboratoire de neurobiologie de la cognition (LNC, UMR 6155), Université de Provence Marseille.

Date: Monday 21st November, 11am in the SBRI Conference room

Pro-active control in (pre)supplementary and primary motor areas in Humans

Nos recherches s’organisent selon deux axes distincts mais néanmoins étroitement intriqués, intrication qui reflète une communauté thématique et épistémologique. Nous cherchons à répondre aux questions suivantes :

Comment se déroulent, dans le temps et les structures anatomiques, les opérations effectuées par le système nerveux ?

Les recherches conduites dans la première direction sont appelées à élucider les caractéristiques temporelles et anatomiques du flux de l’information sensorimotrice. Il s’agit donc de déterminer à quels moments (à l’échelle de la milliseconde) et dans quelles structures (macro et micro-anatomiques) sont effectuées les opérations qui permettent au système nerveux de réagir de fa¸n adaptée à un stimulus environnemental. Nos travaux ambitionnent en particulier d’apporter un éclairage nouveau à l’alternative d’une organisation parallèle (synchrone) ou séquentielle (asynchrone) du traitement de l’information.

Quelles sont les bases neurales du traitement de l’information temporelle ?

Bien qu’étroitement liés, ces deux axes de recherche ont leur autonomie et leur dynamique propre. Les recherches conduites dans la seconde direction sont destinées à tester l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’évaluation du temps subjectif dépend d’un "horloge interne", c’est-à-dire d’un oscillateur neural à haute fréquence. L’intégration ou le comptage des impulsions d’un tel oscillateur par les structures nerveuses dont nous enregistrons l’activité pourrait constituer le mécanisme de base de la mesure du temps subjectif.

Some members from the lab are going to attend the 2011 edition of SFN. Click here for further details.

Date: November 12 - 16th

Place: Washington, DC

Distance and weight make the difference in cortical networks.

Date: Friday 28th October

Place: Yale University, New Haven

Click here for further information.

Khat Reasearch Program: Biobehavioural approaches to examine effects of chronic use.

Guest speaker: Mustafa al'Absi, University of Minnesota

Date: Tuesday, October 11th at 10 am

Dr. al’Absi is professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the international Khat Research Program. Khat (Catha edulis) is a psycho-stimulant plant native to East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula The principal psychoactive constituent of Khat is the alkaloid cathinone, which is structurally related to amphetamine. Since ancient times, the leaves of Khat have been chewed to alleviate fatigue and to induce euphoria. Khat produces effects similar to those of amphetamine such as increased heart rate, hyperactivity, anorexia, behavioural sensitizitation, wakefulness and release of dopamine. Dr al’Absi will review the pharmacological and physiological effects of Khat and its socio-economic impacts.

The INCF Neuroinformatics Congress welcomes researchers in all fields related to neuroinformatics, including data- and knowledge-bases of the nervous system from molecular to behavioral levels; tools for the acquisition, analysis, and visualization of nervous system data; and theoretical, computational, and simulation environments for modeling the brain.

This year's program committee is headed by Professor Mitsuo Kawato, director at ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group in Japan who was himself a keynote speaker at the Stockholm Congress in 2008.

For further details, click here.

Place: Boston

Date: 4-6 September

Selective Gene expression in regions of primate neocortex/implication for cortical specialisation.

Guest speaker: Tetsuo Yamamori from the National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan

Date: Wednesday 15th June, 11 am, SBRI conference room

The neocortex has evolved to play important roles in cognitive and perceptual functions. The concept of localization of different functions in different regions of the neocortex was well established within the last century. Studies on the formation of the neocortex using molecular biollogy and genetic manupulation have advanced to clarify the mechanisms that control neural differentiation and sensory projections that are controlled by attractant and repellent molecules. However, mechanisms underlying cortical area specialization remain unsolved. To address this problem, our approach has been to isolate and characterize the genes that are selectively expressed in particular subsets of primate neocortical areas; the areas of which are most distinctive among mammalian neocortices. By differential display and restriction landmark cDNA scanning (RLCS) methods, we have identified two major classes of genes that are specifically expressed in the adult macaque monkey neocortical areas: One is expressed in the primary sensory areas, particularly, in the primary visual cortex (V1) and the other is expressed in the association areas. The genes that show these specific expression patterns are limited to only several gene families by our large-scale screenings. In my talk, I first describe the isolation and characterization of these genes. Then, I discuss their functional significance in the primate neocortex. Finally, I discuss the implication of these gene expression patterns in neocortical specialization.

Guest speaker: Steven K. Shevell, Visual Science Laboratories, University of Chicago

Date: May 27th, SBRI conference room at 11

The Craik Illusion occurs when two identical patches of light appear to differ in brightness because of a light-dark edge between them.  The neural basis for the illusion remains controversial.  A light-dark edge at a monocular level of neural representation will be shown to be neither necessary nor sufficient for the Craik Illusion. This implies a binocularly integrated neural representation mediates the illusory brightness difference.