CNS 2020 Virtual: Update March 20, 2020 We are pleased to announce the dates of the CNS 2020 Virtual Meeting as May 2-5, 2020. The meeting will be very similar to the Boston meeting in terms of organization and will have virtually all of the original content, plus new presentations — all using the platform […]
Cognitive Neuroscience Society joins FABBS
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) is excited to announce that we have joined the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS). As many of our members will be aware, FABBS works to advance the sciences of the mind, brain, and behavior by advocating for our fields and representing our research community in Congress, […]
Juggling the Early Years of a Cognitive Neuroscience Career
Shelby Smith remembers feeling inspired and humbled the first time she attended the professional development panel at an annual CNS meeting. “There is just something about being in a room filled to the brim with other students where the only purpose of being there is to show you that you’re not alone and that there […]
It’s All Relative: Cooperation Makes People A Special Type of Ape
Q&A with Michael Tomasello When Michael Tomasello was an undergraduate student at Duke University studying developmental psychology, he studied the theories of Jean Piaget, a psychologist who thought evolutionarily. “He was looking at children like they were a different species,” Tomasello recalls. “He would always emphasize that they have their own way and own logic, […]
Modeling Learning Across the Lifespan
Q&A with Catherine Hartley At a special session on the relation between psychology and neuroscience at last year’s CNS conference in San Francisco, Catherine Hartley said: “Even if we can predict behavior, if we don’t know how it works, we likely have not achieved our goals.” While computational algorithms and tools may help researchers predict […]
Revealing the Cognitive Sorcery of Human Intelligence
Q&A with Sam Gershman In the last decade, computational techniques have expanded the toolkit for scientists across disciplines. In neuroscience, computational models are increasingly rendering “visible things that were previously invisible,” says Samuel Gershman, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University. “Computational modeling is not a niche activity. It’s the same theory-building activity in which all […]
Mapping the Brain’s Visual Behavior One Tidbit at a Time
Q&A with Marlene Behrmann For the past 30 years, Marlene Behrmann has been on a mission to answer some of the biggest questions in cognitive neuroscience about how visual function in the brain maps onto structure. Along her journey, she has explored a wide range of topics, including autism, migraines, aphasia, agnosia, and more. “These […]
Predicting Working Memory Through Brain Activity Models
As a ballet dancer, Emily Avery has always had a great appreciation for people’s ability to execute complex movements, recall choreography, and internalize intricate musicality. Her love of dance is what first drew her to the field of cognitive neuroscience, where a growing body of research is using neuroimaging and computational techniques to study working […]
Models of Our Selves Reflected in Our Friends
Just like when an architect builds a scale model of a building, friends in your close-knit social circle build representational models of you. That’s how Robert Chavez, a social cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oregon, describes the neural representations we have of our friends. “And just like the architectural model, others’ representation of you […]
Communication Control: The Brain Activity that Monitors Our Speech
When we communicate with others, we are constantly monitoring our speech and theirs — taking in multiple external cues — to best engage in meaningful conversation. Despite the multidimensional aspects of speech monitoring, most studies on the topic to date have focused on how we produce a string of accurately sequenced sound units rather than […]
