The CIMeC Colloquia Series is an annual set of invited talks given by leading researchers in the mind/brain sciences, both from Italy and abroad, aimed principally at our PhD Students. Given the multi-disciplinary backgrounds of the CIMeC students and researchers, the Colloquia are aimed at a general scientific level rather than at a more specialized audience.

The 2022/23 Colloquium Committee: Chiara Pepe, Alexander Eperon, Davide Cortinovis

Academic Councilor: Dr. Moritz Wurm

Colloquia usually take place on the first Thursday of each month except August. 

2022-2023 Doctorate Academic Year - September Colloquium:

Learning and adapting the structure of spatial maps

Lisa Giocomo
Professor, Neurobiology
Stanford University

Over the last several decades, the tractable response properties of parahippocampal neurons have provided a new access key to understanding the cognitive process of self-localization: the ability to know where you are currently located in space. Defined by functionally discrete response properties, neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex and hippocampus are proposed to provide the basis for an internal neural map of space, which enables animals to perform path-integration based spatial navigation and supports the formation of spatial memories.  My lab focuses on understanding the mechanisms that generate this neural map of space and how this map is used to support behavior.  In this talk, I’ll discuss how our internal neural maps of space adapt to novel environmental features to guide behavior.

Thursday, September 14, 2023 5 p.m.

Previous 2022-2023 academic year Colloquium speakers:

November 10: Nancy Kanwisher, MIT - Functionally Specific Cortical Regions in Humans:  What Others and Why These?

December 1: Giacomo Rizzolatti, Parma University - The mirror brain: past, present, and future

February 2: Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Columbia University - Neural network models as mechanistic explanations of brain information processing

March 3: Marlene Behrmann, University of Pittsburgh Medical School - Hemispheric organization in humans: two hemispheres, one mind

April 13: Nicolas Schuck, University of Hamburg - Learning and replay of state representations in the human brain

May 4: Bratislav Misic, McGill University - Tools for multi-scale, multi-modal annotation of brain networks

June 1: Stefanie Hoehl, University of Vienna - How do infants learn? Neural oscillations shed light on infant attention & learning

June 29: Earl K. Miller, MIT - Cognition is an emergent property