The issue of how humans form coherent, valid and robust percept by processing sensory stimuli (delayed and corrupted by noise) from various modalities is a central question in cognitive science , behavioural science, and neuroscience. The goal of this workshop will be to provide insights on how this challenging problem is solved by the brain. Speakers that will attend this workshop will present various approaches to address the issue of multi-sensory integration (MSI), and multi-modal integration, not only for perception but also for action.
The first session Theoretical approaches for MSI will focus on identifying the key problems inherent to MSI, and present the main approaches currently employed to address those problems.
Examples on how multiple sources of information, sometimes redundant, sometimes conflicting, are flexibly combined to allow coherent percept of the body and/ or the environment will be discussed in the second session, MSI for perception.
A keynote speech by Dora Angelaki will close the first day of the training.
The third session MSI for action will address the issue of how accurate movements can be achieved despite noise and delays in sensory information.
Finally, the session MSI across the lifespan will focus on changes and/ or deficits in children, elderly and patients.
An informal poster session at the end of the second day will offer to the ESRs the opportunity to present their research project, which of course will still be at an early stage, and to discuss opportunities for secondments with PACE PIs.
During the first hands-on sessions, essential Psychophysical methods will be discussed and the students will be introduced tot he widely used open source statistical software R.
During the second hands-on session, the associated partner BKIN will provide a 1/2-day training on the programming of the KINARM Exoskeleton Lab (2 KINARM Exoskeleton robots for the upper limbs coupled with 2D virtual/ augmented reality display) produced by BKIN to manipulate proprioceptive and visual sensory inputs.
Note: hands-on sessions on 29 January are open to PACE and PhD Program students only.
