The Second Workshop and Lecture Series on

"Cognitive neuroscience of auditory and cross-modal perception"

20 - 24 April 2015

Kosice, Slovakia

http://pcl.upjs.sk/

Objectives:

This workshop and lecture series will include introductory lectures and advanced research talks on a range of topics related to the neural processes of auditory, visual and cross-modal perception.

The talks will illustrate the multidisciplinary character of cognitive neuroscience research, covering behavioral, neuroimaging, and modeling approaches, as well as applications of the research in auditory prosthetic devices.

The workshop is aimed at early-stage and advanced students and young researchers, and it will provide ample opportunities for direct interactions between the lecturers and the attendees.

Themes

Spatial hearing, vision and crossmodal perception, neural modeling, methods in cognitive neuroscience: behavioral experiments, EEG and fMRI imaging, modeling, applications: cochlear implants, hearing aids.

Format

Lectures 20 - 22 April, Consultations 23 – 24 April

Venue

Historicka aula, P. J. Safarik University, Srobarova 2, 040 11 Kosice, Slovakia

Organizers

Norbert Kopco, PhD. (norbert.kopco@upjs.sk)

Frederick Gallun, PhD. (Frederick.Gallun@va.gov)

Organizing team and contact

Beata Tomoriova, Lubos Hladek, Perception and Cognition Lab, kogneuro@gmail.com

Program overview

Lectures, talks, posters:

Mon, Tue, Wed: 8:30 – 12:00, 13:30 – 16:05 expert lectures, 16:05 – 17:00: contributed posters & presentations

Plenary lecture and panel discussion:

Wed: 17:30-19:00 in Zlaty Dukat hotel

Consultations:

Thu: 8:30 – 11:30 Individual consultations with experts (by appointment) and work on assignments, 12:00 – 17:00 individual work on assignments
(8:30 – 11:30 alternatively, interested participants can attend the Symposium on university spin-offs and start-up companies)
Fri: 8:30 – 11:30 Individual consultations with experts (by appointment) and work on assignments

Plenary lecture and panel discussion

Virginia Best, Frederick Gallun, and Norbert Kopco “Audibility and spatial hearing”

Speakers and lecture topics

Simon Carlile (University of Sydney)
Lecture 1: Active listening: Speech intelligibility in cocktail party listening.
Lecture 2: Listening in motion

Pierre Divenyi (Stanford University)
Lecture 1: Toward an evolutionary theory of speech: how and why did it develop the way it did.
Lecture 2: What is the cost of simultaneously listening to the “what” and the “when” in speech?

Christopher Stecker (Vanderbilt University)
Lecture 1: RESTART theory: discrete sampling of binaural information during envelope fluctuations is a fundamental constraint on binaural processing.
Lecture 2: Neuroimaging of task-dependent spatial processing in human auditory cortex.
Assignment 1: Psychophysical exploration of binaural cues synchronized to envelope fluctuations: testing the RESTART theory with synthetic and naturalistic sounds. (hackathon type assignment)
Assignment 2: Analysis of an fMRI data set combining task and binaural manipulations in a factorial manner.

Bernhard Laback (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Lecture 1: Sound Localization Cues and Perceptual Grouping in Electric Hearing
Lecture 2: Temporal effects in the perception of interaural time differences: Data and model predictions
Assignment: Acoustic simulation of cochlear implant perception with low-frequency residual hearing

Volker Hohmann (University of Oldenburg)
Lecture 1: Modeling Auditory Scene Analysis by multidimensional statistical filtering
Lecture 2: Modeling Cocktail Party Processing in a Multitalker Mixture using Harmonicity and Binaural Features
Assignment: Implementation of a statistical estimator (particle filter) that tracks a (simulated) pitch track partially masked by noise.

Arash Yazdanbakhsh (Boston University)
Lecture 1: Pursuit eye movements and perceived object velocity, potential clinical applications.
Lecture 2: Visuospatial memory and where eyes look when the percept changes.
Assignment: A simulation assignment to replicate the gain of eye pursuit in following a target.

Aaron Seitz (University of California, Riverside)
Lecture 1: Perceptual Learning; specificity, transfer and how learning is a distributed process
Lecture 2: Brain Training; How to train cognition to yield transfer to real world contexts

Frederick (Erick) Gallun (US Dept. of Veterans Affairs and Oregon Health & Science University)
Lecture 1: Learning From Nature’s Experiments: What Clinical Research Can Mean for Sensory Scientists
Lecture 2: Auditory Processing After mild Traumatic Brain Injury: New Findings and Next Steps
Assignment: Establishing normative ranges of performance using non-linear functions

Istvan Winkler (Hungarian Academy of Science)
Lecture 1: Auditory processing capabilities supporting communication in preverbal infants
Lecture 2: Modeling auditory stream segregation by predictive processes

Virginia Best (Boston University)
Lecture 1: Spatial Hearing: Effect of hearing loss and hearing aids.
Assignment: MATLAB assignment: simulating the effect of hearing loss on spatial cues

Petr Maršálek (Charles University in Prague)
Lecture 1: Coincidence detection in the MSO – computational approaches
Lecture 2: On the single neuron computation

Travel, accommodation, visitor information

Travel: The Kosice Airport is served by Austrian Airlines and Czech Airlines (via Vienna, Prague, Bratislava) and by low-cost airline Wizzair (London Luton Airport). Alternatively you can fly to Budapest and take a 3.5-hr shuttle bus to Kosice (for example, using the cassoviaexpres shuttle bus company). From Krakow you can take the 4-hr shuttle bus operated by Airtrans.sk. More information about how to get to Kosice (also by train or bus) can be found here.

Accommodation: A conference rate of 50EUR/night+(1.5e local tax) has been negotiated with the Zlaty dukat hotel. Please, make your reservation by contacting the hotel directly, either through their website or by emailing the hotel at hotel@hotelzlatydukat.sk and mention the “Cognitive Neuroscience Workshop” to get the rate. Otherwise, there are several hotels close to the workshop venue, for example Hotel Teledom, Villa Regia, Doubletree by Hilton, Hotel Yasmin, Hotel Maraton (for more hotel options please see http://www.booking.com, http://www.hotels.com, for hostels see: http://www.hostels.com, http://www.hostelworld.com)

Visitor information and current events: Košice was one of the European Capitals of Culture in 2013. For the list of new cultural venues and current events there, see http://k13.sk/ (in Slovak). For all events and trip ideas see http://www.visitkosice.eu/ , http://www.slovaktours.eu/, http://www.mickosice.sk/, http://slovakia.travel/ , or http://www.slovakia.com/

Registration

The workshop is open to all interested students/scientists. Registration is free of charge but required (mostly for organizational reasons). In order to register, please send an email to kogneuro@gmail.com stating your name and affiliation, dates on which you are planning to attend. In case you would like to have a presentation please send us an abstract (up to 200 words) and an indication whether you prefer poster or oral presentation no later than April 10, 2015.

Related event

Workshop attendees might also be interested in an independent Symposium on university spin-offs and start-up companies that will take place on 23 April 2015.

Last year’s website

http://pcl.upjs.sk/workshop2014/

Funding

This workshop / lecture series is organized within the Project implementation: SOFOS – knowledge and skill development of the academic staff and students at the University of Pavol Jozef Safarik in Kosice with emphasis on interdisciplinary competencies and integration into international research centres, ITMS: 26110230088, supported by the Research & Development Operational Programme funded by the ESF. Modern education for knowledge society / This project is being co-financed by the European Union