MindBrainBody Lectures
The MindBrainBody Lectures take place on Mondays every 3-4 weeks virtually. The access link and details about the lectures will be given shortly before the date of the lecture. Everyone is invited to join virtually!
Upcoming MindBrainBody Lecture:
Friday, May 19th 2023, 01:00pm (GMT+1)
Title:
Somatosensory Qualities: Blix, Müller and beyond
Abstract:
This talk focusses on simple skin sensations such as temperature and touch, but aims to address foundational questions about perception. Why are sensations so qualitatively different from each other, given that they all rely on a common code of action potentials reaching the CNS? ‘Labelled line’ theories explain sensory quality in terms of a ‘label’ carried by the originating receptor and nerve. This powerful idea of neural specificity has become a textbook dogma, but it is not easy to test. I will report two testing attempts. The first study investigates the quality of microsensations generated at sensitive spots in the human skin. The second study uses suprathreshold stimuli and compares thermal detection ("I felt a stimulus") to thermal discrimination ("It was warm/cold"). This allows to investigate whether detection of a thermal stimulus necessarily causes a percept of its sensory quality, as labelled line theories imply. I will suggest that warmth and cold indeed function as labelled lines from the human skin, despite surprising levels of "quality noise" in sensory perception. The implications of specific signalling and quality noise for the hard problem of consciousness are considered.
Previous MindBrainBody Lectures
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 11.04.2022 at 11:00am
Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition in Grenoble,
Title:
Computational mechanisms for perceptual consciousness and monitoring
Abstract:
The neural correlates of how we experience the world perceptually remain largely unknown. I will present single neuron and computational modeling evidence suggesting that stimulus detection and related confidence involve evidence accumulation processes similar to those involved in perceptual decision-making. I will also present preliminary data supporting the involvement of subcortical regions in detection. Finally, I will argue that conscious percepts might fade in and out of consciousness according to the dynamics of evidence accumulation. I will discuss the implications and limitations of this proposal and illustrate how it may put us in a better position to reach a mechanistic understanding of phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience like its intensity and duration, beyond mere detection.
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 31.01.2022 at 11:30am
Human respiration, oscillations, and behaviour
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 10.01.2022 at 2:30pm
Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes INS - INSERM U1106
Aix-Marseille Université - Faculté de Médecine
APHM, Épileptologie et Rythmologie Cérébrale - Hôpital de la Timone
Marseille, France
using imaging photoplethysmography
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 01.11.2021 at 11am
École Normale Supérieure, Paris
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday , 18.10.2021 at 11am
***************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 26.07.2021 at 11am.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London
------------------------------------------------------------------
**************************************
Francesca Fardo, PhD
Associate Professor
Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience
& Danish Pain Research Center, Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark
------------------------------------------------------------------
**************************************
Previous MindBrainBody Lectures
Date | Presenter | Lecture Title | |
14 | 10.05.2021 | Jakub Limanowski | Precision control for a flexible visuo-proprioceptive body representation |
13 | 29.03.2021 | Rochelle Ackerley | How do you feel? The contribution of a single mechanoreceptive afferent to tactile sensation |
12 | 08.03.2021 | James Kilner | The role of internal bodily signals in action and perception |
11 | 08.02.2021 | Sophie Betka | The exploration of components of bodily self-consciousness, using mixed-reality |
10 | 25.01.2021 | Micah Allen | Towards better interoceptive biomarkers in computational psychiatry |
9 | 21.12.2020 | Joachim Lange | The rhythms of temporal perception |
8 | 07.12.2020 | Thomas Baumgarten | Effects of intrinsic and extrinsic neural activity changes on stimulus processing and perception |
7 | 30.11.2020 | Timo Stein | Measuring unconscious visual processing |
6 | 19.10.2020 | Elena Azanon Gracia | Location specificity of tactile distance aftereffects |
5 | 12.10.2020 | Louise Kirsch | What’s so special about touch? A multidimensional approach to study social touch |
4 | 05.10.2020 | Natalie Schaworonkow | Methodological aspects of analyzing neuronal rhythms in electrophysiological recordings |
3 | 28.09.2020 | Niels Kloosterman | How More Unconstrained Neural Dynamics Aid Adaptive Behaviour |
2 | 07.09.2020 | Saskia Haegens | Oscillatory building blocks underlying perception & cognition. |
1 | 24.08.2020 | Luke E. Miller | Tools extend the spatial coding of touch beyond the body |