Spring 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 still 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 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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28 January 2014:  Organizational Meeting

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

4 February 2014:  Group discussion of Charles Schroeder's work - no designated presenter.

• J. Besle, C. Schevon, A. Mehta, P. Lakatos, R. Goodman, G. McKhann, R. Emerson and C. Schroeder (2011). Tuning of the Human Neocortex to the Temporal Dynamics of Attended Events. J. Neurosci 31(9):3176-85.
• P. Lakatos, G. Karmos, A. Mehta, I. Ulbert, C. Schroeder (2008). Entrainment of Neuronal Oscillations as a Mechanism of Attentional Selection. Science 321:110-113.

11 February 2014:  Dave Bulkin

• Y. Saalmann, M. Pinsk, L. Wang, X. Li and S. Kastner (2012). The Pulvinar Regulates Information Transmission Between Cortical Areas Based on Attention Demands. Science 337:753-6.

Additional references:

• Re Granger causality:  Bressler SL, Seth AK (2011)  Wiener-Granger causality:  a well-established methodology.  NeuroImage 58:323-329.  
• Re the thalamus being more than a relay:  Sherman SM (2007)  The thalamus is more than just a relay.  Curr Opin Neurobiol 17(4):417-422.
• Rachel's book:  Sherman SM, Guillery RW (2013).  Functional connections of cortical areas: a new view from the thalamus.  MIT Press.  

18 February 2014:  FEBRUARY BREAK

• No meeting

25 February 2014:  TBD

• TBD

4 March 2014:  Phil Perrone

• C. Asplund1, J. Todd, A. Snyder and R. Marois (2010). A central role for the lateral prefrontal cortex in goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention. Nature Neuroscience,13(4):507-512.

11 March 2014:  TBD

• Thom might be out of town

18 March 2014:  David Smith

• K. Miura, Z. Mainen and N. Uchida1 (2012). Odor Representations in Olfactory Cortex: Distributed Rate Coding and Decorrelated Population Activity. Neuron 74:1087-1098.

25 March 2014:  Khena Swallow

• J. Arsenault, K. Nelissen, B. Jarraya and W. Vanduffel (2013). Dopaminergic Reward Signals Selectively Decrease fMRI Activity in Primate Visual Cortex. Neuron 77:1174-1186.

1 April 2014:  SPRING BREAK

• No meeting 

8 April 2014:  Lindsey Vedder

• M. Schoenfeld, J. Hopf, C. Merkel1, H. Heinze & S. Hillyard. (2014). Object-based attention involves the sequential activation of feature-specific cortical modules. Nature Neuroscience 17(4): 619-626.

15 April 2014:  Adam Miller

• TBD

22 April 2014:  Cory Horowitz

• TBD

29 April 2014:  Rachel Swanson

• TBD

6 May 2014:  TBD

• TBD