UC Irvine - Dept of Cog Sci - Associate or Full Professor - Computational Neuroscience
RECRUITMENT PERIODOpen Jul 25, 2014 through Nov 15, 2014If you apply to this recruitment by Nov 15, 2014, you will have until Nov 30, 2014 to complete your application.DESCRIPTIONThe Department of Cognitive Sciences (www.cogsci.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) invites applications for a faculty position at the Associate or Full Professor level. We are especially interested in candidates who use mathematical, computational, or robotics approaches to study the neural basis of cognition in any of these areas: (1) vision, hearing, and attention; (2) memory and decision-making; (3) learning and development...
Source: Talking Brains - August 12, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) in Developmental Neuroscience - CMU
Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) in Developmental Neuroscience The Department of Psychology and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at Carnegie Mellon University seek to fill a tenure-track faculty position in developmental neuroscience at the assistant professor level. The position is funded by a generous gift from Ronald J. and Mary Ann Zdrojkowski as a Career Development Chair to attract young researchers to further our understanding of how humans develop. A successful candidate will be committed to high-quality teaching and should have a research background that includes core areas within cogniti...
Source: Talking Brains - August 11, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
How useful is neural oscillation entrainment?
I've been struggling with this question for a while. I haven't looked at it deeply. It's more like a nagging ache that I've been meaning to examine closely at some point. Here's the basic observation/idea in the auditory domain: -Observation #1: Neural oscillations tend to entrain in the phase of their response to periodic stimuli.-Observation #2: Many natural sounds, such as speech, are quasi periodic.-The Claim: Oscillation entrainment facilitates perception by synching periods of maximal neural sensitivity to temporal windows in the stimulus stream that contain the most useful information.I like this i...
Source: Talking Brains - August 8, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Never confuse a statistically reliable behavioral effect with cognitive/computational relevance
There are plenty of example of statistically reliable effects in the embodied cognition literature. Stimulation of motor speech areas modulate performance on speech perception tasks; reading sentences about closing drawers makes one faster in generating pushing movements; [insert favorite result here]. Let's assume all of these effects replicate. I have no particular reason to doubt them.I do have a problem with the knee jerk interpretations though. Motor stimulation modulates speech perception, therefore, the motor system is critical for speech perception. Comprehending sentences about pushing faci...
Source: Talking Brains - August 6, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Myth of Mirror Neurons comment forum
Now that the Myth of Mirror Neurons is starting to ship, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Use the comment box on this post to ask questions, correct my errors, provide counterpoints, or whatever.-greg (Source: Talking Brains)
Source: Talking Brains - August 5, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Dual streams in audition -- in case you thought the idea is derivative of Ungerleider and Mishkin
Ungerleider and Mishkin often get the credit for originating dual stream sensory processing models. But, despite the critical importance of their contributions, the idea that the visual system is computationally bifurcated was well established by the time Ungerleider and Mishkin published their hugely influential chapter on the “Two Cortical Visual Systems” in 1982. They write,It has been our working hypothesis (Mishkin 1972; Pohl 1973) that the ventral or occipitotemporal pathway is specialized for object perception (identifying what an object is) whereas the dorsal or occipitoparietal pathway is specialized for...
Source: Talking Brains - August 4, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
The fourth brain myth
My NYT OpEd piece on brain myths originally included four: two old, one that has just recently taken hold (mirror neurons) and a fourth that is in the earliest stages of the neuromyth life cycle. This fourth myth didn't make the editorial cut due to an 800 space limit. But through the magic of blogging, here it is. Another 21st century neuromyth is just now being born, the idea that if neuroscientists can map the structure of the brain, from micro to macro circuit, we will achieve a complete understanding of the mind. The data around which this infant myth is coalescing is the flurry of technological ...
Source: Talking Brains - August 2, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Wernicke
Well, not quite, but here's an interesting quote from Wernicke 1874, as translated by Eggert 1977, that foreshadows much current work on sensorimotor control for speech production:Observations of daily speech usage and the process of speech development indicates [sic] the presence of an unconscious, repeated activation and simultaneous mental reverberation of the acoustic image which exercises a continuous monitoring of the motor images. [...This sensory-motor pathway] whose thousandfold use [during development] maintains a continuing significant control over the choice of the correct motor image. […] Apart from impairme...
Source: Talking Brains - July 30, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
1 PostDoc & 2 PhD Positions, Language & Predictive Coding, University of Frankfurt / Germany
The Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (Prof. Christian Fiebach) at the Department of Psychology of Goethe University Frankfurt offers three research positions as part of an ERC consolidator project that investigates neurophysiological mechanisms of language processing from a predictive coding perspective: Postdoctoral Researcher (German Salary Level E13, 100%) in Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience of LanguageWe seek a colleague with a strong background in EEG/MEG, fMRI, and/or neuro-computational modeling, and an interest in brain mechanisms underlying language processing. You should have skills in signal processing, data a...
Source: Talking Brains - July 29, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Sensorimotor area Spt under attack (but they're shooting blanks): Reply to Parker Jones et al. 2014
A recent report in Frontiers (link to it here) by my good friends Oiwi Parker Jones (first author) and Cathy Price (senior author) challenges the claim that area Spt is a sensorimotor integration area for vocal tract actions. Their attack comes from multiple fronts, both fMRI and lesion data. On the fMRI side they sought to determine whether Spt was more active during repetition tasks, particularly for pseudowords which demand sensory-to-motor translation, compared to two auditory naming tasks. One involved listening to animal sounds and naming the animal and the other involved listening to someone hummin...
Source: Talking Brains - July 29, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Why I can't talk: Mechanism underlying speech fluency circa 1849
From the Scientific American archives, 1849, Vol. 4, p. 174:The common fluency of speech, in many men and women, is owing to a scarcity of words, for whoever is master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas, common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready; so people come faster out of church when it is nearly empty, than when a crowd is at the door. Yeah, that's why I can't talk. My mind is too full of ideas. (Source: Talking Brains)
Source: Talking Brains - July 25, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Where does the 10% myth come from?
No one knows exactly. A nice summary of what we do know is provided in a recent WIRED piece here. William James was thought to play a role, based on a quote from Dale Carnegie's book, How to win friends and influence people, but this may have been a misquote. Kolb and Wishaw's classic text, Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology suggests Flourens work in the early 1800s as a likely empirical foundation for the myth. Flourens of course is famous for his empirical attack on phrenology. His method involved ablation studies in a variety of animals--chickens, pigeons, frogs, dogs, rabbits--in which h...
Source: Talking Brains - July 24, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Research Assistant - Royal Holloway, University of London - Department of Psychology
Research AssistantRoyal Holloway, University of London - Department of PsychologyLocation:EghamSalary:£32,862 to £34,724 includes London AllowanceHours:Full TimeContract:Contract / TemporaryPlaced on:16th July 2014Closes:14th August 2014Job Ref:0714-123Full Time, Fixed term for 3 years from January 2015Salary is in the range £32,862 to £34,724 per annum inclusive of London AllowanceApplications are invited for the post of Research Assistant to work with Dr Carolyn McGettigan on the project “Vocal Learning in Adulthood: Investigating the mechanisms of vocal imitation and the effects of training and expertise”, ...
Source: Talking Brains - July 22, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Open call for abstracts for Special Issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology: Conceptual Knowledge Representation
This is an open call for original research, reviews, and commentaries associated with representations ofconceptual knowledge in the mind and brain.For the purposes of this Special Issue, conceptual knowledge refers to the knowledge by which weunderstand, make inferences, and produce statements about objects, actions, events, settings, humansocial roles and interactions, and their states or properties.Target topics include:1. Neural theories of conceptual knowledge representation, e.g. how are individual brain systemsand networks of systems involved in the representation of specific types, aspects, or features ofconceptual ...
Source: Talking Brains - July 22, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Post-doctoral positions at new Department of new Max-Planck Institute
The Max-Planck-Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, investigates the cognitive, affective, neuronal, and sociocultural foundations of aesthetic experience. For the newly founded Department of Neuroscience (David Poeppel, director) we are seeking two post-doctoral research scientistswho will participate in the development and execution of neuroscientifically founded projects on aesthetics that link the Department of Neuroscience with the Department of Music and the Department of Language and Literature. We are looking for neuroscientists (cognitive/systems neuroscience) or psychologists with a com...
Source: Talking Brains - July 6, 2014 Category: Neurologists Authors: David Poeppel Source Type: blogs
