WCCI/IJCNN 2020 Special Session on Neurocomputation and Cognition

Special Session on "Neurocomputation and Cognition"

2020 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks -  World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IJCNN-WCCI)

July 19-24 2020, Glasgow, UK

Important Dates:

Paper submission: 15 January 2020 30 January 2020 (Extended)

Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2020

Aims and Scope:
The field of neurocomputation is concerned with the possibility of computation in computers by following the paradigm and analysis of computation that occurs in neurons and the brain. In recent years this has resulted in breakthroughs in pattern recognition, machine learning theory, clustering, associative memory and fault tolerant computation.

Consequently, the precision resulting from the computational and mathematical viewpoint has led to insights helping to clarify aspects of one of the ultimate human research endeavors: understanding the manner in which human thought emerges from the organization of the human brain.

A session on this topic was presented in Rio de Janeiro IJCNN 2018 and was very successful.  Extended papers developed from this session have been submitted to a special issue of the veteran journal Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence and this issue is scheduled to appear early in 2020.  

We will again look into the possibility of another special issue with an established veteran journal.

Topics:
The special session invites submissions in any of the following (and related) areas:

- Neurocomputation techniques as related to human cognitive issues
- Neurocomputational Models of Embodied Natural Language Processing
- Understanding brain information processing underlying real-world tasks.
- Validation of cognitive models using machine learning methods
- Computational Biomarkers for Diseases
- Computational Biomarkers for Cognitive Activity
- Neurocomputational and Architectural Models of Creativity
- Use of Neurocomputation and Machine Learning Tools to identify Physiological Features
- Biologically Inspired Neural Computing
- Analysis of Time Dependent Information in cognition

Submission:

https://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2020/upload.php
Under "Main research topic*" select “S51. Neurocomputation and Cognition”  

More details at:

https://neurocomputation.wordpress.com/2020-ieee-wcci-special-session/ 

Organizers: 

Prof. Larry M. Manevitz – Director Neuro-computation Laboratory, Caesarea Rothschild Institute and Department of Computer Science, U. Haifa, Haifa, Israel and Department of Computer Science, Ariel University, Israel (corresponding organizer) manevitz@cs.haifa.ac.il

Dr.  Alex Frid – Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, The Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), Haifa, Israel, alex.frid@gmail.com

Dr. Hananel Hazan – Levin Lab, Department of Biology, Tufts University,  Boston, USA, hananel@hazan.org.il, personal site 

Prof. Bernardete Ribeiro – Department of Computer Science, Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal, bribeiro@dei.uc.pt, personal site

IEEE IJCNN - Special Session on "Neurocomputation and Cognition"

The field of neurocomputation is concerned with the possibility of computation in computers by following the paradigm and analysis of computation that occurs in neurons and the brain. In recent years this has resulted in breakthroughs in pattern recognition, machine learning theory, clustering, associative memory and fault tolerant computation.

Consequently, the precision resulting from the computational and mathematical viewpoint has led to insights helping to clarify aspects of one of the ultimate human research endeavors: understanding the manner in which human thought emerges from the organization of the human brain.

Scope and Topics

In this special session we will focus on three main directions.  Many researchers have interest in at least two of them.

1)      Recognizing and Classifying Cognitive and Brain activities using Neurocomputation and related technologies

This is a very complex area wherein the neurocomputation serves as a tool; to help uncover subtle relationships.

a)      Example: Work by Nawa, Ando et al (CiNet, Osaka, Japan) on the ability to judge valence of free recall human biographical memories.

b)      Example: Work to do diagnosis and early prognosis of Neuro-degenerative diseases (such as Parkinson’s Disease) from various sorts of features and data (See e.g. Frid, Kantor et al)

c)      Example: Epileptic Seizure Predictions (See e.g. Baraia, Ribeiro et al)

In this area, there is much “old fashioned” work on feature selection and choice of learning method. Yet systematic methodology is still in modus ascendii and one aim of the meeting is to clarify this. Some of this work does not fit easily into, e.g. deep learning techniques because of the relative paucity of data. Thus, also experimental theoretical work relating to how to manage with “small data” would be appropriate as long as it has links to the cognitive aspect.

d)      Example: (Bitan, Shalelshivili et al work on “Classification from Generation” in the context of the deep grammatical task.)

2)      Developing Neurocomputation Models as a means to develop or test cognitive theories via simulation, especially cognitive modeling and computational models of creativity

a)      Example: Computational Models for reading; computational models for autism and corresponding results. Included in this would be such ideas related to neural architectural ideas for such modeling. Example:  Work by Peleg et al  on reading

b)      Example: Computational models of cognitive phenomena (e.g. emotion, creativity, etc.)

c)      Example: Temporal Storage, Reservoir Computing and so on. Example: Work by Hazan et al on how requirements of robustness gives topological constraints on brain models.

d)      Example:  Temporal Sparse Distributed Memory (Manevitz)

3)      Discovery of Objective “Computational” Biomarkers

a)      Example: Using neurocomputation and machine learning tools for neurodegenerative diseases   See, e.g. work by Frid et al.

b)      Example: Discovery of Secondary Declarative Memory using modeling and feature selection. See e.g. work by Gilboa, Koilis et al.

The special session invites submissions in any of the following (and related) areas:

• Neurocomputation techniques as related to human cognitive issues
• Understanding brain information processing underlying real-world tasks.
• Validation of cognitive models using machine learning methods
• Computational Biomarkers for Diseases
• Computational Biomarkers for Cognitive Activity
• Neurocomputational and Architectural Models of Creativity
• Use of Neurocomputation and Machine Learning Tools to identify Physiological Features
• Biologically Inspired Neural Computing

Important dates

• 15 December 2017      – Tutorial, Special Sessions, Workshop and Competition Proposals
• 15th January 2018   1st February 2018    – Paper Submission (extended)
• 15th March 2018         – Paper Acceptance
• 1st May 2018              – Final Paper Submission
• 1st May 2018              – Early Registration
• 8-13 July 2018            – IEEE WCCI 2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Paper submission

If you are interested in taking part on this special session, please submit your paper directly through the IJCNN 2018 website selecting the following option for the "Main research topic": "S20. Special Session on Neurocomputation and Cognition". You can find further information related to the submission process and important dates at the conference website.

Papers submitted for special sessions are to be peer-reviewed with the same criteria used for the rest of contributed papers. As a result, all accepted papers will be included in the proceedings of IJCNN2018.

Organizers

Larry M. Manevitz – Director Neurcomputation Laboratory, Caesarea Rothschild Institute and Department of Computer Science, U. Haifa, Haifa, Israel (corresponding organizer) manevitz@cs.haifa.ac.il

Bernardete Ribeiro – Director of the Center for Informatics and Systems and Director of LARN (Laboratory of Artificial Neural Networks) Faculty of Computer Science, Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal, bribeiro@dei.uc.pt

Alex Frid – Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology, Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, The Technion (Israel Institue of Technology), Haifa, Israel, alex.frid@gmail.com

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