Call for Papers
MLINI 2014 - 4th NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging: Beyond the Scanner
https://sites.google.com/site/mlininips2014/
Friday, December 12, 2014, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Submission deadline: October 10th, 2014
Workshop Overview:
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MLINI workshop focuses on machine learning approaches in neuroscience, neuroimaging, with an extension to behavioral experiments and psychology. This year, our focus is specifically on "Going Beyond the Scanner", which includes making inferences about mental states of a subject from ''cheaper'' (as opposed to fMRI) behavioral data such as subject's speech and/or text, audio, video, EEG and signals collected from various wearable devices.
We believe that machine learning has a prominent role in shaping how questions in neuroscience are framed, and that the machine-learning mind set is now entering modern psychology and behavioral studies. It is also equally important that practical applications in these fields motivate a rapidly evolving line or research in the machine learning community. In parallel, there is an intense interest in learning more about brain function in the context of rich naturalistic environments and scenes. Efforts to go beyond highly specific paradigms that pinpoint a single function, towards schemes for measuring the interaction with natural and more varied scene are made. In this context, many controversies and open questions exist.
The goal of the workshop is to pinpoint the most pressing issues and common challenges across the fields, and to sketch future directions and open questions in the light of novel methodology. The proposed workshop is aimed at offering a forum that joins machine learning, neuroscience, and psychology community, and should facilitate formulating and discussing the issues at their interface. Motivated by the previous workshops in this series, MLINI ‘11, MLINI’12, and MLINI’13, we will center this workshop around invited talks and a panel discussion. Triggered by the discussions, this year we plan to adapt the workshop topics to a less traditional scope neuroimaging scope and investigate the role of behavioral models and psychology, including topics such as psycholinguistics.
Open questions and possible topics for contribution include, but are not limited to, the following:
- How can we move towards more naturalistic stimuli, tasks and paradigms in neuroimaging and neuro-signal analysis?
- What kind of mental states can be inferred from cheaper and easier to collect data sources (as an alternative to fMRI), such as text, speech, audio, video, EEG, and wearable devices?
- How can we leave the lab when acquiring neuroimaging data, towards exploiting mobile acquisition (EEG and NIRS)?
- What type of features should be extracted from naturalistic stimuli such as text, voice, etc., to detect specific mental states and/or mental disorders?
- How can we combine traditional neuroimaging with naturalistic data collected from a subject or group of subjects?
- In general, can we characterize situations when multivariate predictive analysis (MVPA) and inference methods are better suited for brain imaging analysis than more traditional techniques?
- Given recent advances of deep learning in image analysis and other applications, a natural question to ask is whether neuroimaging analysis can benefit from such approaches?
- How well can functional networks and dynamical models capture the brain activity, and when using network and dynamics information is superior to standard task-based brain activations?
Workshop Format:
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In this one-day workshop we will explore perspectives and novel methodology at the interface of Machine Learning, Inference, Neuroimaging and Neuroscience. We aim to bring researchers from machine learning and neuroscience community together, in order to discuss open questions, identify the core points for a number of the controversial issues, and eventually propose approaches to solving those issues. Each session will be opened by several invited talks, and an in depth discussion. This will be followed by original contributions. Original contributions will also be presented and discussed during a poster session. The workshop will end with a panel discussion, during which we will address specific questions, and invited speakers will open each segment with a brief presentation of their opinion.
Paper Submission:
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We seek for submission of original (previously unpublished) research papers. The length of the submitted papers should not exceed 8 pages in Springer format, excluding the references (LaTeX2e style files are available on the workshop page).
Submission of previously published work is possible as well, but the authors are required to mention this explicitly. Previously published work can be presented at the workshop, but will not be included into the workshop proceedings (which are considered peer-reviewed publications of novel contributions). Moreover, the authors are welcome to present their novel work but choose to opt out of the workshop proceedings in case they have alternative publication plans.
Important dates:
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- October 10, 2014 - paper submission
- October 24, 2014 - notification of acceptance/rejection
- December 12, 2014 - Workshop at Montreal, Quebec, Canada , following the NIPS conference
Organizing Committee:
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Guillermo Cecchi (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)
Kai-min Kevin Chang (Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University)
Georg Langs (Medical University of Vienna, CSAIL, MIT)
Brian Murphy (Machine Learning Department, Carngie Mellon University)
*Irina Rish (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center) - main contact
Leila Wehbe (CMU)