All events

(Computer) Vision without Sight: Finding, Reading, and Magnifying Text

Seminar: Oxyopia Seminar | October 1 | 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | 489 Minor Hall

Speaker/Performer:  Roberto Manduchi, Professor of Computer Engineering, UC Santa Cruz

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

Reading is a pervasive activity in our daily life. We read text printed on books and documents, shown on directional signs and advertisement, and displayed on computer and smartphone screens. People who are blind can read text using OCR on their smartphone; those with low vision may magnify onscreen content. But these tasks are not always easy. Reading a document with OCR requires taking a...   More >

Seeing in the cold – neurobiology of the ground squirrel retina

Seminar: Oxyopia Seminar | October 8 | 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | 489 Minor Hall

Speaker/Performer:  Wei Li, PhD, NIH/NEI

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

The ground squirrel has a cone-dominant retina and it hibernates in winter. We exploit these two unique features to study retinal biology and adaptations during hibernation. In this seminar, I will discuss an optic feature of the ground squirrel retina, as well as several forms of adaptation during hibernation in the retina and beyond. By exploring the mechanisms of such adaptation, we hope to...   More >

Fronto-thalamic interaction in cognitive control and flexibility: Michael Halassa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Colloquium | October 10 | 5:15-6:15 p.m. | 1104 Berkeley Way West

Speaker/Performer:  Michael Halassa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sponsor:  Department of Psychology

Fronto-thalamic interaction in cognitive control and flexibility

Seminar: Neuroscience Seminar | October 10 | 5:15-6:15 p.m. | 1104 Berkeley Way West

Speaker/Performer:  Michael Halassa, Assistant Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

The Berkeley Stem Cell Center Director's Special Seminar: “From blood to brain: how do circulatory proteins regulate brain function?”

Seminar | October 11 | 3:30-4:30 p.m. | 101 Life Sciences Addition

Featured Speaker:  Tony Wyss-Coray, Stanford University School of Medicine

Sponsor:  The Berkeley Stem Cell Center

​Graduate Student Seminar

Seminar: Oxyopia Seminar | October 15 | 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | 489 Minor Hall

Speakers/Performers:  Jazzi Junge, Orel-Bixler Lab; Patrick Carney, Wildsoet Lab

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

​The generation of neural diversity​

Seminar | October 17 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 245 Li Ka Shing Center

Featured Speaker:  Claude Desplan, New York University

Sponsor:  Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

Berkeley ACM A.M. Turing Laureate Lecture: Towards a Conscious AI: A Computer Architecture Inspired by Neuroscience with Manuel Blum

Colloquium | October 17 | 4-5 p.m. | Sutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium

Speaker/Performer:  Manuel Blum, UC Berkeley

Sponsor:  Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)

Thanks to major advances in neuroscience, we are on the brink of a scientific understanding of how the brain achieves consciousness. This talk will describe neuroscientist Bernard Baars' Global Workspace Model (GWM) of the brain, its implications for understanding consciousness, and a novel computer architecture that it inspires. The Model gives insight for the design of machines that truly...   More >

From Academia to Airbnb: a high dimensional anecdote: Jason Vytlacil

Colloquium | October 17 | 5:15-6:15 p.m. | 1104 Berkeley Way West

Speaker/Performer:  Jason Vytlacil

Sponsor:  Department of Psychology

You can find Jason Vytlacil's LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-vytlacil/

A cortical reinforcement prediction error encoded by VIP interneurons

Seminar | October 18 | 3:30-4:30 p.m. | 101 Life Sciences Addition

Featured Speaker:  Adam Kepecs, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Sponsor:  Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

This seminar is partially sponsored by NIH

​Graduate Student Seminar

Seminar: Oxyopia Seminar | October 22 | 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | 489 Minor Hall

Speakers/Performers:  Sarah Kochik, Wildsoet Lab; Nevin El-Nimri, Wildsoet Lab

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

Nevin El-Nimri's Talk
Manipulating Intraocular Pressure as a Novel Avenue for Controlling Myopia Progression

Myopia (near-sightedness) results from progressive, excessive eye enlargement and is associated with blinding complications. It has become a significant public health concern, reaching epidemic levels in some parts of the world. The eye is like a balloon, with pressure inside the eye...   More >

Set Summary Perception, Outlier Pop Out, and Categorization: A Common Underlying Computation?

Seminar: Oxyopia Seminar | October 29 | 11:10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | 489 Minor Hall

Speaker/Performer:  Shaul Hochstein, Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

Recent research has focused on perception of set statistics. Presented briefly with a group of elements, simultaneously or successively, observers report precisely the mean of a variety of set features, but are unaware of individual element values. This has been shown for both low and high level features, from circle size to facial expression. A remaining puzzle is how can the perceptual system...   More >

Vision to Action: Towards a Cellular-Resolution Atlas of the Zebrafish Visual and Visuomotor System

Seminar: Neuroscience Seminar | October 29 | 4-5 p.m. | 125 Li Ka Shing Center

Speaker/Performer:  Herwig Baier, Department Genes – Circuits – Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, 82152 Martinsried, Germany

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

Understanding brain-wide neuronal dynamics and behavior requires a detailed map of the underlying circuit architecture. We built an interactive cellular-resolution atlas of the zebrafish brain, with a focus on the visual and visuomotor system, and generated from our dataset an inter-areal wiring diagram, which serves as ground truth for synapse-scale, electron microscopic reconstructions. We have...   More >

Opportunities and challenges of high-field fMRI for neuroscience applications

Colloquium | October 31 | 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. | 1104 Berkeley Way West

Speaker/Performer:  Kendrick Kay, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Sponsor:  Neuroscience Institute, Helen Wills

In this talk, Dr. Kendrick Kay will describe two recent projects that exploit functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at ultra-high magnetic field strength (7 Tesla). The first project consisted of whole-brain fMRI retinotopic mapping in 181 healthy adults, as part of the Human Connectome Project (T2*-weighted gradient-echo EPI, 1.6-mm isotropic resolution, 1-s TR, 85 slices, multiband...   More >