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trajectories, EEG, emotional states, and heart rate) customized applications have to be utilized. But how to make data accessible to a broad audience, like researchers from diverse disciplines? A possible solution is to use multimedia containers which support the visualization and sonification of the scientific data thus allowing explorative multimodal data analyses with any multimedia player. To test this approach it had been prototyped on several datasets and then evaluated in a user study. Read on to learn more about the benefits and the requirements and how artificial networks can be trained on such standardized containers.

Read the article here.

Find out more on the project webpage.

Confirmed speakers:
Tamim Asfour*, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Verena Hafner*, Humboldt-Universität of Berlin
Ivan Herreros*, UPF Barcelona
Concetta Morrone*, University of Pisa
Bernhard Hommel*, Leiden University
Ivana Konvalinka*,Technical University of Denmark
Simone Schütz-Bosbach*, LMU Munich
Markus Siegel*, University Tübingen
Luciano Fadiga*, University of Ferrara
Tobias Heed*, University of Bielefeld
Basil Wahn*, Osnabrück University
Susan Brennan, Stony Brooks University
Thomas Metzinger*, University Mainz
Merle Fairhurst*, University of London
Hauke Heekeren*, Free University Berlin

Please note that deadline for registration and submission of abstracts is 5th May.

The OCCAM (Osnabrück Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting) is organized by Gordon Pipa, Frank Jäkel and myself and brings together well established outstanding researchers  as well as young promising scientists. This year, the 6th workshop of the series, jointly with the socSMCs project that is coordinated by Andreas K. Engel, we focus on social interactions. The topic comprises theoretical, computational, physiological and robotics approaches. The program includes full length talks (see above), student presentations, a poster session, guided poster tours and a public talk to the general audience. We go to great length to actively involve all participants. Furthermore, there will also be time for informal discussions.

Osnabrück is a charming town with a long history many places worth visiting. It is conveniently
located at the intersection of major train routes and has a local airport with good connections to major hubs (Frankfurt, Munich, London-City Airport) as well as a selection of further direct connections. More detailed travel information can be found here.

We'd be happy if this meeting is of interest to you or your students and hope to welcome you in Osnabrück in summer 2017.

Best, Peter, Gordon, Frank & Andreas.

This Scholarpedia article reviews the literature on joint attention from the sensorimotor perspective and explains its components and underlying neuronal mechanisms. It concludes that sensorimotor processes may have a prominent role in preparing and coordinating the activities in joint action.

In this review article on multisensory research, we compare studies related to information processing when humans perform object-based and spatial attention tasks. Findings suggest that the attentional system flexibly allocates distinct or shared attentional resources across sensory modalities depending on task
demands. We propose that such flexibility reflects a large-scale optimization strategy that minimizes the brain's costly resource expenditures and simultaneously maximizes capability to process currently relevant information. [link]

Simple tasks, like choosing the right object and hitting it, are still too difficult for robots to perform, as the solution requires complex sensorimotor interactions between the robot and its environment. But thesolution is the same as for the humans: learning by doing is the key to it. Ali Ghadirzadeh et al. from KTH Sweden developed a data-efficient deep predictive policy training (DPPT) framework with a  deep neural network policy architecture. An experiment with a PR2 robot demonstrates the effectiveness of this framework by needing only 180 attempts to learn skilled object grasping and ball throwing. Find the article here.

ncentrate on the influence of different modalities. However, does the type of task play a role in the allocation of attention? This study shows that in a detection task attentional resources are partly shared with the attentional resources required for visuospatial processing. In conjunction with previous results, this argues attentional resource allocation in multisensory processing is task-dependent. Benefits of multisensory integration are not dependent on attentional resources. [link to the article]

https://twitter.com/socSMCs

Topics are the neuronal and sensorimotor foundations of social cognition. Information and registration here.

The project will have its first periodic review by the European Commission on July 22, 2016.

Just returned from a meeting in Barcelona where we brainstormed about a concept for the performance to be developed and staged at the upcoming ssocSMCs/BCBT summer school.