Contact: sepsepaip18@gmail.com
click on a photo or scroll down to know more
Marisa
Carrasco
Pascal
Fries
Helena
MATUTE
CARLO
MINIUSSI
MARISA CARRASCO
New York University
"Dissociating Covert Attention and Presaccadic Attention"
​
Abstract
​
Visual attention is essential for visual perception. Spatial attention allows us to grant priority in processing and selectively process information at a given location. In this talk, I will compare and contrast two kinds of spatial attention: covert (allocated to the target location, without accompanying eye movements) and presaccadic (allocated to the location of the upcoming saccade’s target).
First, I will highlight some research on endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) covert spatial attention, which has shown to alter performance and appearance in many basic visual tasks mediated by contrast sensitivity and spatial resolution. I will present a recent study in which we have found that covert attention modulates performance even at the center of gaze without any accompanying eye movements.
Second, I will review studies in which we have shown that presaccadic attention improves performance and increases perceived contrast at the saccade target location. Critically, these modulations change the processing of feature information. Saccade preparation narrows orientation tuning and enhances the gain of high spatial frequency information at the upcoming saccade location. Moreover, this frequency shift takes place automatically even when it is detrimental to the task at hand. These modulations are time-locked to saccade onset, peaking right before the eyes move. We propose that saccade preparation may support transaccadic integration by reshaping the representation of the saccade target to be more fovea-like just before saccade onset.
Third and last, I will discuss similarities and differences among covert–endogenous and exogenous–attention and presaccadic attention, with regard to their temporal dynamics, gain and tuning properties. Systematically investigating their common and differential characteristics will further our understanding of the pervasive selective processing of information, which enables us to make sense of our complex visual world.
​
​
Biography
​
Marisa Carrasco is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University since 2002. She received her Licenciate in Psychology from the National University of Mexico and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. Prof. Carrasco was the president of the Vision Sciences Society (2011–2012) and for the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (2015). She has been a senior editor of Vision Research and associate editor of the Journal of Vision, the most important journals in the field. She was named a Collegiate Professor in 2008 and was the director of Undergraduate Research at the NYU’s College of Arts and Science (2010-2016).
Her research achievements have been recognized by several prestigious awards and fellowships throughout her career. Among them are an American Association of University Women Fellowship, a National Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, a Cattell Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her research as been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Marisa Carrasco has published in the most prestigious scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Neuron, Current Biology, Journal of Neuroscience, Psychological Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, as well as the Journal of Vision and Vision Research. She has made numerous seminal contributions in visual perception and attention, using psychophysics, neuroimaging and computational modeling. These include documenting the central role of physiological factors in visual search, characterizing how attention affects visual perception, and how attention potentiates perceptual learning. In the last years, Carrasco has expanded her research to include special populations (autism, ADHD, amblyopia and cortical blindness).
PASCAL FRIES
Ernst Strüngmann Institute
"Rhythms for Cognition: Communication through Coherence"
​
Abstract
​
I will show that free viewing of natural images induces gamma-band oscillations in early visual cortex. If the gamma rhythm in a lower visual area entrains a gamma rhythm in a higher visual area, this might establish an effective communication protocol: The lower area sends a representation of the visual stimulus rhythmically, and the higher area is most excitable precisely when this representation arrives. At other times, the higher area is inhibited, which excludes competing stimuli. I refer to this scenario as the Communication-through-Coherence (CTC) hypothesis. I will show that the gamma rhythm in awake macaque V4 modulates the gain of synaptic inputs. These gain modulation effects would be ideal to lend enhanced effective connectivity to attended stimuli. I will show that this is indeed the case between macaque V1 and V4. When two visual stimuli induce two local gamma rhythms in V1, only the one induced by the attended stimulus entrains V4. I will then investigate how these changes in gamma synchronization between visual areas are controlled by influences from parietal cortex. I will show that posterior parietal cortex influences visual areas primarily via beta-band synchronization. I will show that generally, beta-band influences are stronger in the top-down direction, while gamma-band influences are stronger in the bottom-up direction. This holds across macaques and human subjects, and in both species it allows building a hierarchy of visual areas based on the directed influences. Finally, I will show that attentional selection occurs at a theta rhythm. When two objects are monitored simultaneously, attentional benefits alternate at 4 Hz, consistent with an 8 Hz sampling rhythm, sampling them in alternation.
​
​
Biography
​
Pascal Fries is is also director of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with the Max Planck Society in Frankfurt since 2009. Since 2008 he is professor of Systems Neuroscience at Radboud University in Nijmegen. In 1998 he received his M.D, and in 2000 he was awarded a Ph.D from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, where he was supervised by Prof. Wolf Singer. From 1999 to 2001 he was a postdoctoral research fellow with Prof. Robert Desimone at the Laboratory of Neuropsychology in the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda. From 2001 to 2009 he was principal investigator at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging of Radboud University.
He is an expert in the study of brain rhythms and their role in cognition. In 2005 he formulated the Communication-through-Coherence hypothesis, based on the idea that neuronal communication is supported by the synchronization of brain oscillations. This theory, which has been recently revised, is widely accepted and has laid the foundations for the study of brain communication. Pascal Fries has published his findings in highly prestigious journals, such as Science, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Trends in Neurosciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Neuron, PNAS, Current Biology or Journal of Neuroscience. His research achievements have also been recognized with several awards, including the VIDI (Career development) award from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the EURYI (European Young Investigator) Award from the European Science Foundation, and the Boehringer Ingelheim FENS (Federation of European Neuroscience Societies) Research Award.
HELENA MATUTE
Deusto University
​
"The Illusion of causality"
​
Abstract
Illusions of causality occur when we believe that there is a causal relationship between two events which are actually uncorrelated. These illusions bias our everyday decisions, sometimes with disastrous consequences. I will review experiments on how cause-effect relationships are learned and will show how this process leads to both accurate and illusory patterns of causal detection. Evidence-based strategies on how to reduce these biases will also be presented.
Biography
Helena Matute is a Professor of Experimental Psychology at Deusto University (Bilbao, Spain), where she is also the founder and director of the Experimental Psychology Laboratory. She has been the Head of the Psychology Department and of the PhD Program. She has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Minnesota (USA), Gent (Belgium), Sidney (Australia), and Queensland (Australia). Her research is concerned with the study of learning and cognitive biases. More specifically, her research interests include causal learning, causal illusions, illusions of control, and the sense of agency. In recent years she has also dedicated efforts to translate her research to the study of social problems such as pseudosciences, misinformation, and scientific vs magical thinking in our society. She has published numerous research articles in the most prestigious international scientific journals in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology. She has received several awards for her work, including the Santander Group Award, the Prisma award, and the JotDown-DIPC award. She has been an Associate Editor of QJEP, the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. She has been the President of SEPEX, the Spanish Society for Experimental Psychology and the President of SEPC, the Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology. She is also a member of the Scientific Board of FECYT, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.
​
​
CARLO MINIUSSI
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences
​
"Transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography in the exploration of cortical connectivity"
​
Abstract
​
Recent developments in neuroscience have emphasised the importance of integrated distributed networks of brain areas for successful cognitive functioning. Neuroimaging studies adopting analyses from the graph field of mathematics have shown that the brain architecture has a modular organisation in which segregated networks supporting specialised processing are linked through a few long-range connections, ensuring processing integration. Although such architecture is structurally stable, it appears to be flexible in its functioning, enabling long-range connections to regulate the information flow and facilitate communication among the relevant modules, depending on the contingent cognitive demands. Importantly, much of the current understanding of the brain architecture relays on measures of structural connectivity, reflecting anatomical connections, and of functional connectivity, reflecting the temporal correlations between cortical activity. These measures cannot fully explain the causal dynamics of connectivity and their relationship with cognition.
​
The aim of this presentation is to highlight an emerging distinctive approach based on the direct activation of an area by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and the simultaneous evaluation of the distribution of this activity in cortical networks by electrophysiological recordings (EEG). By presenting TMS-EEG studies on network dynamics at rest and during cognition, it will be showed how TMS-EEG data support the general principles of brain architecture inferred from graph theory and provide further insights into the properties of the functional connectome.
​
Biography
​
Carlo Miniussi a is full professor of Human Neurophysiology, director of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences - CIMeC University of Trento and Head of the Cognitive Neuroscience section at IRCCS Saint John of God. He was educated in Padua, where he received his MSc in Experimental Psychology in 1994, and in Verona, where he was awarded a PhD in Neuroscience in 1999. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University for two years. In 2001 he became chief of the Neurophysiology and Neuropsychology Laboratory IRCCS Saint John of God and was appointed aggregate Professor of Neurophysiology, at Brescia University. Since 2005, he is Associate Professor of Human Physiology and Full professor since 2013. In 2016, Prof. Miniussi moved at Trento University.
He is an expert in the study of cognitive functions and in the use of electroencephalography and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to explore and understand the neural systems that support cognitive functions in the human brain. He has theoretical and practical working experience with multiple neuroimaging and neurophysiological methodologies (EEG, TMS, tES), as well as integrated brain functional imaging (co- registration TMS-EEG; tDCS-EEG). In recent years he directed his efforts to transfer knowledge from basic research to the clinical setting in view of transforming this knowledge in protocols that can be used to improve human health and well-being.
