Fall Semester 2013-2014

For Spring Semester 2013-2014, the Behavioral, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience (BCS) Journal Club will meet on Tuesdays from 11:45 to 1:00 pm in Uris Hall 205. 

Papers and notes from previous semesters can be found in the BCS meeting archive.

The semester's theme is Attention, from both a neurobiological and cognitive perspective.  The goal, of course, is to cross-reference and cross-challenge the two so as to come up with an integrative and useful understanding of the field.  How can human attentional tasks best be studied using animal models?  What, if any, is the special importance of cholinergic neuromodulation to attention?  Is "attention" still a useful concept?  As always, please interpret BCS themes broadly -- they are meant to focus rather than to exclude.  

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BCS will continue its "minimal Powerpoint" policy, in place since Fall 2011.  In order to make discussions more engaging and less formal, we encourage presentations to be primarily "chalk talks", in which concepts are sketched rather than figures shown.  Mixed media are OK too, in which a complex figure can be put onto a slide or simply zoomed up on from the PDF file of the original paper, but drawing the figure tends to convey stronger understanding than does flashing a figure up on the wall.  We also emphasize that you do not have to present papers in their entirety, much less multiple papers.  Having everybody read up thoroughly on something small and focused usually makes for a better experience than everybody skimming one or more full papers.  You may want to present only one exciting concept, exemplified by one or more figures drawn from one or more papers.  That's great.  Focus on the concepts, and don't feel compelled to master every detail of every paper that you want to include in your presentation.  Do what you feel is best, but please do not just put the figures of a paper into a slide show and describe the paper.  

That said, presenting your own work is always welcome, and in this case often it will be in Powerpoint format and formally organized.  Not a problem.  

To add yourself to the BCS-L mailing list, send a plain-text email to bcs-L-request@cornell.edu with the body of the message saying simply join.  The subject line doesn't matter.  Sending the message leave instead will unsubscribe you from the list.  See Cornell's Lyris HowTo page for further details. 

You can enroll in the BCS Journal Club for graduate or undergraduate credit  (1-2 CR, S/U) as a Topics in Biopsychology seminar:  PSYCH 6271.  The course requires that you present at least once during the semester and participate actively overall.  You are welcome to attend without enrolling, of course, but we do appreciate you enrolling if you plan to attend the whole semester and to present. 

Please contact Thomas Cleland or David Smith with any questions.

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3 September 2013:  Organizational Meeting

• No readings. Please come prepared to choose a day to present from the many opportunities below.

10 September 2013:  Khena Swallow  (Introductory readings on attention)

• Desimone and Duncan (1995). Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention.  This review is still the canonical theoretical framework for visual attention in neuroscience.  We are likely to refer back to it repeatedly over the course of the semester as we read and discuss other papers.
• Chapter 1 from Harold Pashler's book The Psychology of Attention (1998).  A classic from the cognitive science perspective.  Particularly notable is the author's position that the term "attention" is poorly defined and no longer useful.  

17 September 2013:  Dave Bulkin

• Muzzio et al (Kandel lab) (2009).  Attention enhances the retrieval and stability of visuospatial and olfactory representations in the dorsal hippocampus.  
• Fenton et al (2010).  Attention-like modulation of hippocampus place cell discharge.  

24 September 2013:  Adam Miller

• Gershman, Schapiro, Hupbach and Norman (2013). Neural Context Reinstatement Predicts Memory Misattribution. J. Neuroscience 33(20):8590-5.
• Eisenberg, Kobilo, Berman and Dudai (2003). Stability of Retrieved Memory: Inverse Correlation with Trace Dominance. Science 301:1102-4.

1 October 2013 (Thom may be absent):  Lindsey Vedder

• David A. Oakley and Peter W. Halligan (2013). Hypnotic suggestion: opportunities for cognitive neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience 14:565-576.

8 October 2013:  Pedro Rittner

• Hasselmo and McGaughy (2004).  High acetylcholine levels set circuit dynamics for attention and encoding and low acetylcholine levels set dynamics for consolidation.  Progress in Brain Research 145. 
• Hasselmo (2006).  The role of acetylcholine in learning and memory.  Current Opinion in Neurobiology 16: 710-715.

15 October 2013:  FALL BREAK 

• No BCS meeting.

22 October 2013:  Phil Perrone

• TBD

29 October 2013:  Guoshi Li

• TBD

5 November 2013:  Rachel Swanson

• TBD

12 November 2013:  Society for Neuroscience Meeting

• No BCS meeting.

19 November 2013:  TBD

• TBD

26 November 2013:  SiWei Luo

• Readings TBD.  Subject will be either the role of attention in flavor perception or how reward- or aversive associations guide attention.

3 December 2013:  TBD

• TBD