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Fall Semester 2011-2012

For Fall Semester 2011-2012, 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 overarching theme this semester is yet to be determined, but our likely first speaker will discuss his own recent work relating to neural representations.  Please interpret BCS themes broadly -- they are meant to focus rather than to exclude.  

Starting in Fall 2011, BCS will try out a "minimal Powerpoint" policy.  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  (2 CR, S/U) as a Topics in Biopsychology seminar:  PSYCH 6271-102.  The course requires that you present at least once during the semester and participate actively overall.

Please contact Thomas Cleland or David Smith with any questions.

30 August 2011:  Organizational Meeting
  • No readings. Please come prepared to choose a day to present from the many opportunities below.
6 September 2011:  Raj Raizada 
  • Research talk:  "What makes different people's representations alike: A solution to the problem of across-subject fMRI decoding"
  • Here are the Powerpoint slides from Raj's talk.
  • To see Raj's manuscript about the decoding-via-similarity-space work (mostly skipped over during his BCS talk, submitted to J. Cognitive Neuroscience), please contact Raj directly. 
13 September 2011:  Dave Bulkin
20 September 2011:  Eyal Nitzany
  • No readings.
27 September 2011:  Pedro Rittner
  • Pedro will be talking about a computational model he is working on in deep olfactory bulb.  Guoshi and Anuttama also have particular insights into the questions described. 
4 October 2011:  TBD
  • TBD
11 October 2011:  FALL BREAK - NO BCS
18 October 2011:   Matt Lewis
  • For background, please read:  Dayan P, Huys QJM (2009) Serotonin in affective control.  Annual Review of Neuroscience 32:95-126.  This review attempts to combine the studies of serotonin (aka 5HT) in invertebrates with studies in vertebrates to construct a grand synthesis, and contains several ideas that are well worth discussing. 
25 October 2011:  Adam Miller
  • Two papers in line with Adam's biannual theme.  What does that mean?  Come and ask Adam yourself.
  • van der Meer MAA, Redish AD (2009)  Covert expectation-of-reward in rat ventral striatum at decision points.  Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 3(1).
  • Howe MW, Atallah HE, McCool A, Gibson DJ, Graybiel AM (2011)  Habit learning is associated with major shifts in frequencies of oscillatory activity and synchronized spike firing in striatum.  PNAS 108(40):16801-16806.  
1 November 2011:  SiWei Luo

For additional background, if desired:

  • Galef BJ (2002)  Social learning of food preferences in rodents:  rapid appetitive learning.  Current Protocols in Neuroscience 8.5D.1-8.5D.8.  
  • Kiyokawa Y, Takeuchi Y, Nishihara M, Mori Y (2009)  Main olfactory system mediates social buffering of conditioned fear responses in male rats.  European Journal of Neuroscience 29:777-785.
8 November 2011:  Anuttama Sheela Mohan
  • These two papers are a point/counterpoint "Perspective" pair published in Neuron this year:
  • Sahay A, Wilson DA, Hen R (2011)  Pattern Separation: A Common Function for New Neurons in Hippocampus and Olfactory Bulb.  Neuron 70:582.
  • Aimone JB, Deng W, Gage FH (2011)  Resolving New Memories: A Critical Look at the Dentate Gyrus, Adult Neurogenesis, and Pattern Separation.  Neuron 70:589.
15 November 2011:  Society for Neuroscience meeting -- NO BCS
  • NEWS ITEM:  Tom Griffiths will be speaking this Friday, 18 November, at the Psychology Colloquium (3:30 in Uris Hall 202).  You may remember him from such previous BCS papers as Tenenbaum JB, Griffiths TL (2001)  Generalization, similarity, and Bayesian inference.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24:629-640.  You can fill the empty space in your soul by rereading that paper, or his more recent work.  
22 November 2011:  Guoshi Li
  • TBD
29 November 2011:  Sasha Devore
  • TBD
  • No labels