Yearly Archives: 2014

Park at Developmental Brown Bag, Thurs. 12/4 at 12:45 p.m.

Joonkoo Park of UMass Psychological and Brain Sciences (Developmental) will be presenting in the Developmental Brown Bag series in Tobin 423 at 12:45. Everyone is welcome.

Title: The Neural Basis of Numerical Intuition

Abstract: Humans are endowed with an intuitive sense of number that allows us to roughly perceive and estimate numerosity (i.e., the cardinal value of a set of items) without relying on language. Understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie our numerical intuition has recently gained a huge attention for both theoretical and practical reasons. Yet, one central controversy in current research is whether our numerical intuition is indeed based on number or not. This topic is under hot debate because it has been unknown whether the mind and brain is capable of representing number itself or is only capable of encoding number based on other perceptual cues that are necessarily confounded with number, such as the total surface area or density of a dot array. In this talk, I will introduce a novel analytic method, which allows an assessment of the unique contributions of number and other visual properties. I will then describe the application of this approach to a series of passive-viewing event-related-potential studies in human adults that investigate the temporal dynamics of neural sensitivity to number and to other visual properties. The results demonstrate that the human brain is uniquely sensitive to number from very early in the visual stream, providing strong evidence for the existence of a neural mechanism for rapidly and directly extracting numerosity information in the human visual pathway. With the results from five-year-olds performing the same task, I will further discuss how such a neural mechanism may develop from young childhood to adulthood.

Kurland at Cognitive Brown Bag, Weds. 12/3 at noon

Jacquie Kurland of UMass Communication Disorders will be presenting in the Cognitive Brown Bag series in Tobin 521B at noon. Everyone is welcome. The abstract for her talk:

Evidence increasingly suggests that intensive language-action therapy, such as Constraint-Induced Language Therapy (CILT), can take advantage of the brain’s potential to overcome learned non-use, even in chronic moderate-to-severe aphasia. It is believed that CILT may bring about rapid improvements in naming by jumpstarting systems that have been deprived of opportunities for experience-dependent learning. However, many questions remain regarding which aspects of the treatment are most effective, why the treatment works for some but not others, and importantly, what the mechanisms are supporting language recovery in post-stroke aphasia. The current study examines changes in behavior and fMRI BOLD activation in 20 individuals with chronic aphasia who underwent two weeks of intensive language therapy ­ with or without constraint to speech.

First Annual UMass Cognitive Science Workshop

Join us on Thursday, November 13th from 2:00 until 5:30 in Computer Science 150/151 to learn about and contribute to Cognitive Science efforts on the UMass Amherst campus. The Computer Science building is at the far north end of campus, and there are metered parking spots available directly across the street.

2:00  Social 15 minutes to meet others interested in Cognitive Science and to see a short video introducing the new website

2:15  Lisa Sanders (Co-Director Cognitive Science Initiative) will outline our current plans to become an Institute of Cognitive Science and introduce John McCarthy

2:20  John McCarthy (Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate School) will talk about interdisciplinary research and graduate education

2:30  Andy Barto (Computer Science) Computational Clues to the Brain’s Reward System

2:50  Louise Antony (Philosophy) Epistemology and Psychology: Can Justification be “Naturalized”?

3:10  Caren Rotello (Cognitive Psychology) Why Cognitive Psychology is Important for Neuroscience: An Example from Research on Reasoning

3:30  Poster session and social hour

4:30  Rajesh Bhatt (Linguistics) The Importance of Treebanks in Cognitive Science

4:50  Erik Cheries (Developmental Psychology) Foundations of Mind: Infants’ Knowledge of Objects, Agents, & Identity

5:10  Dave Huber (Cognitive Neuroscience) Testing a Perceptual Habituation Model with Electrophysiology

Food and drink will be provided. We have room for a few more posters, so if you have something ready to present please sign up by Monday November 10 at 5 pm by filling out this form. Remember, posters already presented at other conferences are perfectly welcome!