Cognitive Neurosciences Occasional Seminar Series 2011
The Cognititive Neuroscience Occasional Seminar Series features guest speakers with national and international profile who specialise in the area of cognitive neuroscience. Topics include current debates and research directions in the field.
At the end of the seminar you are invited to join presenters for an informal chat at Haddons Cafe.
Enquiries: Prof David Crewther, email dcrewther@swin.edu.au
- Title:
- The interplay between multisensory integration and stimulus
- Presenter:
- Dr Ayla Barutchu (Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Melbourne)
- Date:
- 6 September 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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Multisensory integration (MSI) is a selective process whereby only sensory stimuli inclose proximity are integrated into a unified percept. It is commonly accepted that MSI ispredominantly driven by bottom-up inputs. In this talk, I will present behavioural and neural evidencehighlighting the important role top-down influences play in the inhibition of MSI to irrelevant sensorysignals. The interplay between such top-down influences and bottom-up inputs will also be discussed.
- Title:
- Predictive coding and binocular rivalry
- Presenters:
- Bryan Paton and Jakob Hohwy (Monash Philosophy & Cognition Lab)
- Date:
- 13 September 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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The notion of unconscious perceptual inference, particularly in the shape of predictive coding, promises to address many of the problems of visual perception that has long preoccupied philosophy. The dichoptic viewing conditions during binocular rivalry presents an extreme example of the epistemic task confronting perceptual inference and rivalry is therefore an important test-case for the predictive coding framework. This talk explores what predictive coding can and cannot tell us about the mechanism behind rivalry. The guiding thought is that Bayesian inference and prediction error drive selection, dominance and alternation in rivalry, and a number of computational and empirical studies of rivalry are reviewed in this light. The talk also presents preliminary findings from interdisciplinary imaging and psychophysical studies of binocular rivalry, which test aspects of the predictive coding hypothesis.
- Title:
- Polypharmacology and the treatment of cognitive decline - do natural medicines hold the key?
- Presenter:
- Prof Andrew Scholey, Centre for Human Psychopharmacology
- Date:
- 27 September 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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Cognition involves multiple processes interacting in complex, and possibly idiosyncratic ways. It is therefore unsurprising that monopharmacological treatments for cognitive decline and dementia have had little impact on the disorders. It may be that by affecting multiple systems, certain natural medicines and/or nutritional interventions - 'nutra' - may offer a more promising approach. Unlike more mainstream pharmacological agents, nutra agents may contain dozens of active components. It appears that certain plants have evolved with a combination of properties which, in concert, may affect multiple neuronal, metabolic and hormonal systems. Since behavioural processes are themselves modulated by such systems, the effects of herbal extracts may particularly depend upon complex interactions within and between physiological systems.
This field offers unique challenges to psychopharmacology. Nevertheless, over the past two decade there has been an rapid growth in research into the human behavioural effects of natural medicines. This paper will briefly draw on specific examples from a systematic assessment of the acute behavioural effects of nutra interventions including Ginseng, Sage, and polyphenols. This work is in its infancy but may uncover promising candidates with which to optimise day-to-day cognitive functioning, to maintain psychological wellbeing throughout the lifespan and even to treat conditions where mental function becomes fragile - including dementias.
- Title:
- Neuroimaging cognitive control and its application to understanding addiction
- Presenter:
- Dr Robert Hester, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
- Date:
- 18 October 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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Cognitive control mechanisms are critical for facilitating the efficient interaction of an organism with its environment. In humans, cognitive control processes, such as behavioural inhibition and performance monitoring, allow appropriate behaviours to be facilitated and inappropriate ones to be suppressed, particularly in the context of reward and punishment. The importance of cognitive control processes for human behaviour is evidenced by the vast array of both neurologic and psychiatric syndromes where control problems impair everyday functioning. For example, cognitive control underlies the ability to inhibit the immediate pursuit of pleasurable stimuli and for the development of adaptive patterns of behaviour - both key factors in drug addiction. I will present our research that has used neuroimaging and cognitive paradigms to elucidate the brain networks critical to different aspects of cognitive control in healthy adults, as well as the application of these methods to understanding behavioural and neural changes in chronic drug users.
- Title:
- Social Learning in Autism: a Neurodevelopment Persepctive
- Presenter:
- Dr Giacomo Vivanti
- Date:
- 25 October 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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Social-cognitive development in humans is grounded on a set of "hardwired" skills that enable children to
1) pay attention to relevant aspects of the environment in order to make sense of other people's behaviour and
2) incorporate the actions they observe into their own behavioural repertoire (i.e., social learning).
This phenomenon, which allows individuals to take advantage of other people's knowledge and avoid the costs of trials and errors learning, reflects the interplay of uniquely human social-cognitive biases (e.g. drive to orient attention toward social versus non-social stimuli) and higher-level cognitive processes (e.g. strategic selection of what to imitate). While the behavioural presentation of these phenomena has been widely documented, the mechanisms underlying the ability to understand and learn from others' behaviour are not fully understood. Difficulties in understanding and imitating others' actions, as well as difficulties in learning, are frequently documented in children with autism.
A set of recent experimental studies based on the eye-tracking technology and the prospective examination of social learning abilities in a cohort of pre-schoolers with ASD is providing us with new insight on the nature of these difficulties (Vivanti et al., 2011; Vivanti et al., in preparation). Both lower level cognitive processes such as organizing actions around goals and prioritizing social information and higher level cognitive processes such as interpreting referential cues conveyed by people's faces appear to be involved in ASD children's social learning difficulties. We will discuss these findings and their relevance for clinical practice, future research and theoretical debate on the neurocognitive mechanisms subserving social learning in children with and without autism.
- Title:
- How do neurotransmitters help decide what we see and do?
- Presenter:
- Olivia Carter (University of Melbourne)
- Date:
- 15 November 2011
- Time:
- 4.30-5.30pm
- Location:
- EN213
- Details
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In neuroscience, one pervading mystery is how the brain is able to generate an "internal" perceptual experience from the available "external" sensory information. Ambiguous stimuli, like binocular rivalry and the Necker cube, offer a unique means to investigate this process experimentally because observers generally experience changes between multiple perceptual states without corresponding changes in the stimulus. I will present results obtained using a variety of methods including pharmacology (hallucinogens), pupillometry and basic psychophysics. The first half of the talk will focus on perceptual rivalry in the visual, auditory and tactile domains. The second half of the talk will move on to some recent studies looking at simple motor and cognitive decision events. Together the results suggest that the cycle of perceptual switching characteristic of rivalry may reflect a generalized mechanism that is common to perception, cognition and action that allows the brain to decide between multiple valid alternatives, without becoming stuck on a non-optimal decision. While the exact mechanisms are unknown, my data, and research from other groups, suggest that the process may depend heavily on the coordinated activity of defuse neurotransmitter systems like serotonin and noradrenaline and I will therefore present my data within the context of current models of neurotransmitter function.