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First Graduate
Program on Cognitive Neuroscience, Amsterdam, 28 January-1 February 2002 Cognitive Neuroscience is a relatively young field where neuroscience and psychology meet. Therefore, the Graduate School Neurosciences Amsterdam (ONWA), and the Graduate School for Experimental Psychology (EPOS) joined forces to present a course on this exciting new topic. Cognitive Neuroscience studies the relation between brain and mind. It tries to understand the cognitive capabilities of the mind, such as planning, reasoning and all the faculties of consciousness in terms of their underlying neural mechanisms, such as neural structure, physiology, and neuronal interactions. Topics of this course will be: · Memory What are the different types of memory, how are they implemented in the neural tissue, and how are they affected by disease? · Attention. How and why does the brain select certain inputs and why does it process these faster, better or in more detail than other inputs? · Consciousness How does the brain generate consciousness and what differentiates conscious and unconscious processes? · Stress
and Emotion What is the role of stress and emotion in our behavior and cognitive functioning? · Executive
Functions and Working Memory What are the mechanisms underlying the short-term and long-term planning of behavior? The aim of this course is to deal with the above issues both from a psychological and a neural perspective. Researchers actively working in these fields will do the teaching. Moreover, a distinguished international lecturer will address one of the topics in more depth. This year, we found Dr. Wolf Singer from the Max Planck Institut für Hirnforschung willing to address the role of neuronal synchrony in learning and perception. Thus, the student will be provided with an in depth overview of state-of-the-art views, theory and research into these questions. To enter this course, it is highly recommended that the Advanved Neuroscience course (ONWA) or the Cognitive Neuroscience Course (EPOS) or Neuroscience Course (EPOS) has been completed. To acquaint PhD-students with contemporary methods in the study of Cognitive Neuroscience, there will be several workshops, dealing with brain imaging tools like functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and ElectroEncephaloGraphy (event-related potentials or ERPs), behavioral neurophysiology in animals, with psychophysical techniques like unconscious priming, and with connectionist modeling. More information about this course can be
obtained from the organizers Dr. Victor A.F. Lamme (v.lamme@amc.uva.nl,
020-566 2049) and Dr. Jaap Murre (jaap@murre.com, tel
020 525 6722). Please subscribe for this course at the office of the ONWA, mrs. drs. Els
Borghols (ea.borghols.anat@med.vu.nl,
020-444 9641). Course schedule
Location of the rooms· Rooms starting with A. are located in the Psychology
Building (Building A) at Roetersstraat 15. Rooms A.A and A.E are located at ground level.
Room C.206 is also located at Roetersstraat 15 or at least can be reached through this
building by walking to the first floor in Building A and then following the signs to
Building C. Subway stop ‘Weesperstraat’ (is third stop van Central Station or
second stop from Amstel Station; you can take any subway train; or click a link for
further details on traveling to
the Psychology Building and maps
of the location of Buildings A, C, and M. · Room M.C3 is located at the Plantage Muidergracht 12 (close
to Roetersstraat 15) in Building M. · Rooms starting with NIH are located in the IOI-NIH building at Meibergdreef
47, behind the AMC Hospital (Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam).
Subway stop ‘Holendrecht’. Travel time from NIH by subway to Roetersstraat is
about 30 min (incl. walking to and from the stops). Titles and abstracts of the lectures
Monday9:40:11:00 Fernando Lopes da Silva, UvA. Distinct memory systems mediating declarative, emotional and procedural memory functions.
In this lecture the general features of the multiplicity of memory systems that subserve distinct categories of memory functions are described. The experimental paradigms that are used to study declarative and nondeclarative (procedural) learning are analyzed with especial emphasis on animal models of associative learning, i.e. classical and emotional conditioning and of declarative memory. The corresponding anatomic circuits and neuronal elements are considered in general terms. The neurobiological mechanisms that likely underlie the formation of memory traces in such neuronal circuits at the cellular and molecular levels (long-term synaptic potentiation and depression) are examined. How these mechanisms relate to the processes of encoding and retrieval of information in the brain is critically discussed.
11:15-12:30. Jaap Murre, UvA and UM. Hippocampus-cortex interaction in learning, memory and amnesia.
Examples of 'Standard Models' of retrograde amnesia will be discussed (the TraceLink model and the Memory Chain Model) that assume a long-term consolidation process in which memories are somehow transferred from the hippocampus to the neocortex. Specific topics will be forgetting and learning, long-term consolidation, different forms of retrograde amnesia in humans and in animals, semantic dementia, and learning and forgetting with neocortical amnesia in transgenetic mice. The phenomena will also be discussed in light of the view held by Nadel and Moscovitch who deny that such hippocampus-to-neocortex transfer process exists.
TuesdayLectures will start at 9:30 and end at 12:30 or a bit later. Precise time schedule will be announced.
First lecture. Jan Theeuwes, VU, Spatial Seletive attention: An Introduction .
Second lecture. Dirk Heslenfeld, VU, Functional Brain Imaging of Attentional Processes in Humans.
11:00-11:30 Fire drill and coffee. The entire building must be cleared when the alarm sounds.
Third lecture. Pieter Roelfsema, UvA, Attention and the visual cortex.
Wednesday
9:30 : Victor A.F. Lamme, UvA and NORI, Consciousness, the cognitive neuroscience approach.
Starting points and definitions, The test case: understanding visual awareness, How to ask a subject about his visual awareness, The role of attention, The distinction, between phenomenal experience and reportability, The search for the neural correlate of visual awareness, What neuropsychology tells us, A local or global neural system?, The role of recurrent corticocortical interactions.
11:00 coffee break
11:15 Dick Bierman, UvA, Quantum Models of Consciousness, an introduction
1.Why quantum physics.- non-locality and the binding problem, - Newtonian and Quantum physics and free will, 2. The measurement problem in quantum physics, - superposition, - collapse of state vector, 3. Penrose and Hameroff, - non conscious processing and superposition, - quantum gravity as collapse inductor, 4. Stapp, - dualistic perspective: Schrodinger's Cat, 5. Empirical approaches, - the Schrodinger Cat experiment, - photon echo from the retina, 6. Transcendental aspects of Consciousness, - empirical evidence for anomalous effects, presentiment, - can quantum physics explain the anomalies.
Thursday
Lectures will start at 9:30 and end at 12:30. Precise time schedule will be announced. Jan van Strein, VU, The neuropsychology of emotion During the first part, Jan van Strien will introduce basic theories on the neuropsychology of emotion, e.g. the valence-model, modular model and clinical models. The role of specific brain areas such as the frontal cortex and amygdala will be discussed as well as the observed lateralization of emotional valence.These introductory subjects will be followed up by more indepth information from recent research regarding the valence model (RTs, ERP). Marian Joëls, UvA, Brain circuits and transmitters involved in stress and emotion In the second part, Marian Joels will provide an overview of brain circuits and neurotransmitter systems directly involved in the processing of emotional and stressful information. Emphasis will be on the connections between the amygdala and hippocampal circuits. Recent research data on the cellular effects of stress hormones in these brain regions will illustrate the current state of affairs and indicate the challenging open issues in this field.
FridayLectures will start at 9:30 and end at 12:30. Precise time schedule will be announced.
Richard Ridderinkhof, UvA, The control of cognitive processes: evaluative versus executive control in the activation, suppression, and monitoring of actions.
Cyriel Pennartz, NIH, From reward processing to plannign and
goal-directed action: cognitive neurophysiology and computational neuroscience. Hans Supèr, Visual Working Memory: from perception to memory.
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University of Amsterdam