Invitation to attend the 2013 Gill Symposium, September 25, Indiana Memorial Union, on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington

Dear Neuroscience and Psychology Majors,

It is my pleasure to invite you to the 2013 Gill Symposium that will be held on Wednesday, September 25, in the Whittenberger Auditorium at the Indiana Memorial Union. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Novel insights into memory and cognition” This promises to be an exciting day with four outstanding speakers:

Dr. Bruce McNaughton, the 2013 Gill Award recipient will speak on, “Doughnuts in the Brain: A Toroidal Attractor Theory of the Cognitive Map.” Dr. Loren Frank, the 2013 Gill Young Investigator Award recipient, will speak on “Neural Substrates of Memory and Decision-Making.”

Rounding out the program will be Dr. Joshua Dubnau (Micro-RNA 276a and the Zombie Fruit Fly) and Dr. Ivan Soltesz(Organization and Control of Hippocampal Chronocircuits).

Following their presentations the speakers will participate in a round table discussion (with audience questions). Panelists will share their perspectives on Science and how model systems can be best used to study memory and cognition.

Preceding the four invited speakers will be the annual graduate student thesis award and lecture.

Following the panel discussion, there will be a poster session and reception from 5:30 to 6:30 PM in the IMU Solarium.

The timing of the day’s events is on the attached schedule.

Feel free to attend any of the talks or events that you find interesting. If you plan to be at one of the events with substantial food (breakfast, lunch, poster reception), please register (free, below) so we will have enough for everyone.

http://www.indiana.edu/~gillctr/registrationform.shtml

At the welcome table located outside of Whittenberger Auditorium, you will receive a program and name tag. The latter will provide access to all symposium events including breakfast, lunch, and the reception.

I look forward to seeing you at the symposium.

Ken Mackie, MD

Linda and Jack Gill Chair of Neuroscience

Professor Psychological & Brain Sciences

MSBII 120 Indiana University

702 N Walnut Grove Ave

Bloomington, IN 47405-2204

812-855-2042 (PH)

812-856-7187 (FAX)

Student sessions: Parents, Peers, and Pressures: Balancing Life as a Prehealth Student (for all prehealth students)

Parents, Peers, and Pressures: Balancing Life as a Prehealth Student

(for all prehealth students)

Tuesday, October 1, 2013
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM at Woodburn Hall 003

Students and alumni pursuing admission to any type of competitive admission health program are invited to attend the following event:

If you feel stressed out about the competitive nature of being admitted to health professions programs, you are not alone! Often adding to preprofessional students' own anxieties, and the pressures students put on themselves, are pressures felt from parents, who often have their own perspective on what the best path is for their student; and pressures preprofessional students feel when they compare themselves to other students on similar career paths.

In this session, co-presented by the Health Professions and Prelaw Center and IU Counseling and Psychological Services, we will present concrete ideas you can implement to reduce your level of preprofessional anxiety:
--Constructive ways to respond to the pressures of being a very busy preprofessional student, who must also be academically successful beyond what many of your peers must achieve;
--Constructive ways to respond to the pressure and sense of competition you might feel in relation to peers who might be applying to the same professional programs as yourself;
--Specific ways to cope with the stress that often comes with changing (or even thinking about changing) your career path - changes which are sometimes unexpected, or even unwanted (e.g., when students realize they will not be competitive for admission, or find themselves unanchored when they realize they've been on the "wrong" path);
--Specific language you can use if you feel parental or peer pressure to pursue a path you don't feel best suits your own talents, interests, or career goals.

The focus in this session is on providing very concrete and specific solutions you can put into action. Reducing your level of preprofessional anxiety can lead to making better personal, academic, and career decisions, and can also help you more fully enjoy your undergraduate experience!

It is okay if you must arrive late or leave early. No RSVP required.

For more information: HPPLC, 812.855.1873, hpplc@indiana.edu

Behavioral Neuroscience and Animal Behavior mix with Development

We have a couple of openings for interested, committed, reliable undergraduates interested in research experience.  Investigations include studies of how infant mice acquire their social preferences and express their sociality.  We manipulate maternal behavior, neuropeptides, and physiological conditions and study developmental processes and outcomes. 

Initial responsibilities will include breeding mice and encoding videorecordings of social behavior, mother-pup interactions, and contact patterns among littermates.   Testing animals and running experiments to follow.

We’re seeking students who can commit to at least the next two semesters and are available for 10 hours per week.

Write, with resume, to: ablab@indiana.edu

The memory and perception lab under Prof Richard Shiffrin (MAPLAB - http://maplab.cogs.indiana.edu/), is looking to add one or two undergraduate Research Assitants. The RA would primarily be working on experiments related to visual search and attention. The RA could further design their own experiments and run analysis of data under the supervision of senior students. 

The duties of the RA would involve setting up experiments, pilot testing, attending lab meeting, recruiting subjects and depending on interests experimental design and analysis.

The RA would receive research credits for the hours spent (5 to 10 hours a week) in the lab. It goes without mention, any published work would be duly attributed (read resume highlights).

Please feel free to contact knkumar@indiana.edu for further information with a brief BIO/resume stating your research interests.

SPHS colloquium: Mike Jones, April 12

Please join us for a colloquium presented by the SPHS PhD Organization and the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences!

 

The ‘Other’ Dimension of Words

by Mike Jones, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Indiana University
Dept of Psychological and Brain Sciences,

Cognitive Science Program, &

School of Informatics

 

Location: Speech and Hearing Building, Room C141

Time: Friday, April 12, 11 am - noon

 

ABSTRACT

Meaning is simultaneously the most obvious feature of language (we can all compute it rapidly and automatically), and the most mysterious aspect to study. In comparison to many areas of cognition, relatively little is known about how the mind computes meaning from experience. We can reasonably measure and model the characteristics of words based on their physical properties, such as frequency, orthography, phonology, etc. But lexical semantics is often seen as a mysterious ‘other’ dimension and is approximated with subjective ratings, hand-coded norms, or surface-level count algorithms. In this talk, I plan to do a tutorial on some recent advances in cognitive and statistical models of lexical semantic representation. These models attempt to learn rich semantic representations for words from statistical redundancies in text corpora. Time permitting, I will also cover some recent work on integrating perceptual and linguistic information in semantic models, compositional semantics, and some work from my lab applying the models to better understand cognitive processing in linguistic tasks from clinical populations.

SPHS colloquium by Caitlin Fausey, this Friday, March 29

Everyday visual statistics in the first two years of life

by Caitlin Fausey, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral research fellow

IU Dept of Psychological and Brain Sciences

 

Location: Speech and Hearing Building, Room C141

Time: Friday, March 29, 11 am - noon

 

ABSTRACT

The nature of input is fundamental to all theories of development. Traditional research has rested on relatively sparse measures of that input. But, advancing methods in analyzing large datasets are revealing structure that is not apparent in smaller samplings. Children in their first two years have approximately 9000 hours of visual experiences, experiences that surely shape the developing system. What are the basic properties of visual input and do these properties change with age? In this talk, I will describe ongoing projects designed to capture structure in visual input from (1) parent reports of early face, object and activity experience, (2) third-person views of in-the-lab play sessions between parents and infants across cultures, and (3) first-person views of infants’ lives at home. This ongoing research suggests that the statistical structure of the learning environment is dynamic and gated by young children's developmental level and cultural context.

 

Undergrad research opportunity

Registration and submission portals are now open for the 27^th Ohio Undergraduate Psychology Research Conference, to be held Saturday, April 27^th at Miami University in Oxford, OH!

 

Undergraduate researchers from any school or institution in the region are eligible and encouraged to submit an abstract for consideration (due April 15). All accepted submissions will be invited for delivery as oral presentations. Move beyond the typical poster presentation and gain valuable experience in a comfortable atmosphere of your peers and excellent faculty from across the region!

 

Even if they are not presenting, your students (and you!) should join us to support their peers presenting research. Registration is free and includes breakfast, lunch, and two special events:

 

Keynote address by Dr. Robert Bjork (UCLA):  Dr. Bjork is a highly-decorated Past President of APS and a leading researcher in learning and memory, especially as they relate to educational practice. His research has identified the most successful study techniques, distinguished between what we know and what we think we know, critically evaluated the role of learning styles, examined the efficacy of multiple-choice test formats, and much more. Dr. Bjork is an engaging and entertaining speaker sure to please both students and faculty, who will summarize this research in a keynote address titled "Managing One's Own Learning: Beliefs, Techniques, and Illusions."

 

Discussion panel: Getting into graduate school:  Faculty from Miami’s graduate program, as well as new and seasoned graduate students, will convene a panel to provide advice and answer any questions you might have about the graduate admissions process. This will take place concurrently with the faculty meeting, so students can make productive use of their time while waiting on you for a ride!

 

We would appreciate if you would help us to spread the word by forwarding this information to the students in your department, especially those that might have original research to present resulting from independent study, Honors theses, summer programs, or senior capstone and other coursework. Submissions will be accepted until April 15.

 

We encourage you to visit our website at www.MiamiOH.edu/OUPRC, or reply by email if you have any questions.