Learning words in a bilingual world. ABSTRACT: In the U.S., 1/3 of children hear a language other than English in the home and have the opportunity for bilingual language development. Yet, the mechanisms behind word learning across two languages have not been clearly outlined. In this talk, I will present two lines of work focused […]
Six Dimensions of Dance Cognition. ABSTRACT: There is a growing body of work in philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience that tries to better understand the mind by examining it in the context of dance. Such work is often premised on the idea that dance demonstrates important, general, and underappreciated features of human thought. However, existing […]
Modeling shared and variable information encoded in fine-scale cortical topographies. ABSTRACT: Information is encoded in fine-scale functional topographies that vary from brain to brain. Hyperalignment models information that is shared across brain in a high-dimensional common information space. Hyperalignment transformations project idiosyncratic individual topographies into the common model information space. These transformations contain topographic basis functions, affording […]
Approximate Analysis by Synthesis: Towards a Computational Theory of Vision ABSTRACT: Vision is humans' underappreciated superpower. It gives us the miraculous ability to perceive the three-dimensional structure of the world from the complex pattern of light rays which are imaged on our retinas. Vision can be conceptualized as Analysis by Synthesis, formalized by Bayesian probability […]
Neural representations: From humans to artificial networks and back ABSTRACT: I will discuss various properties of neural representations (dimensionality, spectra, hyperalignments) found in biological brains and show how they can be connected to recent findings in the inner workings of artificial neural networks. I will show results in the context of vision using fMRI data […]
What kind of computation is cognition? Prof. Josh Tenenbaum is a Professor in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Prof. Tenenbaum studies the computational basis of human learning and inference.
Making sense of the world: People, places, and THINGS. Abstract: Light falling on the retina triggers neural activity that is propagated along sub-cortical and cortical pathways to ultimately elicit the perceptual experience of a world that is full of people, places, and things. However, much prior research has focused on broad visual distinctions (e.g. scenes, […]
The distributed conceptual network in the human brain. ABSTRACT: Human behavior is based on a complex interaction between perception, stored knowledge, and continuousevaluation of the world relative to plans and goals. Even seemingly simple tasks such as watching a movie orlistening to a story involve a range of different perceptual and cognitive processes whose underlying […]
Computational architecture of speech comprehension
Computational architecture of speech comprehension
Mechanisms of Culture and Individuality in the Visual Value System of the Brain
Title and abstract TBA.