(Utorok 03.10.2017 o 0:00)
prof. Ing. Igor Farkaš, Dr. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Cognitive robotics aims at explaining human cognition by constructing artificial agents (physical or simulated) and equipping them with learning mechanisms to model cognition. I will introduce the paradigms of supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning in the context of artificial neural networks. We will illustrate their use in several examples in cognitive robotics. The ideas will be presented via selected tasks of motor learning, learning body schema and spatial cognition in a simulated humanoid robot. These examples will serve as motivation for potential research projects.
(Utorok 17.10.2017 o 0:00)
RNDr. Martin Takáč, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
When speaking, meaning we want to convey is (somehow) rooted in our experience and (somehow) represented in brain. In this talk I will present several computational models of various aspects of memory, language and autonomous meaning construction.
(Utorok 24.10.2017 o 0:00)
prof. PhDr. Silvia Gáliková, PhD. (Department of Philosophy and Arts, Trnava University & Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava) , domovská stránka
The aim of the talk is to introduce selected problems within recent discussions on the nature of the Self. I intend to highlight inconsistencies on the concept or concepts of "self" ("I") as well as complexity of the phenomenon itself. I argue that recent findings from neurocognitive and clinical research support the idea of a physical nature of feeling the existence of the Self. I also aim to outline implications from research in cognitive linguistics on the nature of the concept of "self" and the way we conceptualise inner states of our experience.
(Utorok 07.11.2017 o 0:00)
Mgr. Ing. Roman Rosipal, Phd (Ústav merania SAV) , domovská stránka
o improve upper-limb neuro-rehabilitation in chronic stroke patients we apply new methods and tools of clinical training and machine learning for the design and development of an intelligent system allowing the users to go through the process of self-controlled training of impaired motor pathways. We combine the brain–computer interface (BCI) technology with a robotic arm system into a compact system that can be used as a robot-assisted neuro-rehabilitation tool: (1) We use mirror therapy not only to improve motor functions but also to identify subject’s “atoms”, i.e. specific EEG patterns associated with imagined or real-hand movements, using a parallel factor analysis. (2) We designed a BCI-based robotic system using motor imagery in a patient with an impaired right upper limb. The novelty of this approach lies in the control protocol which uses spatial and frequency weights of the estimated sensorimotor atoms during the MT sessions.
(Utorok 21.11.2017 o 0:00)
Mgr. Lenka Kostovičová, PhD. (Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava & Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Accurate understanding of probability and risk is crucial for informed choices. However, decades of research on human decision making have provided evidence that people are prone to numerous biases in probabilistic reasoning. Large part of these deviations is related to external representation of data. For instance, people are sensitive to statistical format of numerical information and to verbal probability framing. The lecture will cover three main themes: i) a short review of experimental evidence on how simple changes in information wording affect processing of risks and probabilities, ii) practical applications in medical, environmental and financial domain, and iii) suggestions and challenges for further research.
(Utorok 05.12.2017 o 0:00)
prof. MUDr. Daniela Ostatníková, PhD. (Institute of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
The talk will outline the processes of neural development of human central nervous system and its functional units during prenatal and postnatal life. The hierarchy of central regulatory systems and processing in relation to emotions and social cognition will be introduced. I will deal with the hormonal influence, particularly testosterone, on particular anatomical structures involved in cognition and its consequences on brain development and nervous functions resulting in communication deficits and disturbances in social behaviour. The results of our own research in healthy human individuals and in patients with autism will be discussed.
(Utorok 06.03.2018 o 0:00)
prof. Ing. Igor Farkaš, Dr. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Mental imagery is a phenomenon that has been given various theoretical accounts in cognitive science. We present an enactive approach to visuospatial mental imagery, implemented in a hybrid computational model, using the so-called perceptual actions. The model consists of a forward model, an inverse model, both implemented as neural networks, and a memory/controller module, that grounds simple mental concepts, such as a triangle and a square, in perceptual actions, and is able to reimagine these objects by performing the necessary perceptual actions in a simulated humanoid robot. We tested the model on three tasks – salience-based object recognition, imagination-based object recognition and object imagination – and achieved very good results showing, as a proof of concept, that perceptual actions are a viable candidate for grounding the visuospatial mental concepts as well as the credible substrate of visuospatial mental imagery. (The core of this work was done with students of cognitive science - Jan Jug, Tine Kolenik and André Ofner - during their mobility semester).
(Utorok 13.03.2018 o 0:00)
RNDr. Kristína Malinovská, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Standard error backpropagation is still the most prominent algorithm for supervised training of artificial neural networks, although it has been claimed to be biologically implausible. Algorithms based on local activation differences such as GeneRec (O'Reilly, 1996) were designed as an alternative to error propagation. In continuation with our previous research (Malinovská/Rebrová and Farkaš, 2013), we present a model based on GeneRec that learns heteroassociative mappings. We show how our Universal Bidirectional Activation-based Learning algorithm can learn various other tasks if different parameters are used and that its performance in canonical neural network tasks, such as 4-2-4 encoder or XOR as well as in machine learning benchmarks such as the MNIST dataset, is comparable with a standard error backpropagation model.
(Utorok 20.03.2018 o 0:00)
Assoc. Prof. Mihailo Antovic, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia) , domovská stránka
Since the mid 1970s connections between music and language have been widely studied in cognitive science. The first part of this talk will present the main directions such studies have taken in recent years (structural, neurobiological, evolutionary, and semantic). In particular, I will discuss major breakthroughs from linguistics that made an impact on music cognition and then reflected back on the study of language. In the second part, I will provide a precis of four recent studies by my group. The first of these looks into the relative weights of perceptual clues for constructing well-formed metrical and melodic patterns in music; the second suggests that seemingly disparate cross-linguistic conceptualizations of music-theoretic constructs, such as scales ''moving upward'' or ''getting thinner'', do not necessarily support the strong case for linguistic relativity, but may rather emerge from more universal, higher-order schematic invariants; the third study revisits the referential power of program music, suggesting that in constructing musical meaning participants are highly sensitive to contextual priming; the fourth segment integrates such results into a larger-scale theoretical program on the nature of musical meaning, vouching for ''multi-level grounding'' in (musical) semantics. Altogether, I hope to suggest that some constructs originally defined in linguistics and then taken over by music cognition can help shed additional light on some major dilemmas of cognitive science in general.
(Utorok 27.03.2018 o 0:00)
Jozef Drahovský (Net2C, s.r.o. , Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Už dnes jazdí po našich cestách veľa vozidiel s rôznymi elektronickými systémami, ktoré informujú vodiča o hroziacom nebezpečenstve a preberajú riadenie, keď vodič nekoná. Postupne pribúdajú aj vozidlá s umelou inteligenciou, ktorej môže vodič úmyselne odovzdať riadenie a následne sa venovať inej činnosti. Na rozhodovanie vozidlá vyplýva nielen znalosť ovládania vozidla, znalosť dopravných predpisov a dopravných značiek, ale aj nešpecifikované okolnosti, ktoré musí vozidlo zvládnuť aspoň na úrovni ako priemerný vodič človek.
(Utorok 10.04.2018 o 0:00)
prof. Bipin Indurkhya, PhD. (Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland) , domovská stránka
We investigate the role of perceptual similarity in visual metaphor comprehension process. In visual metaphors, perceptual features of the source and the target are objectively present as images. Moreover, to determine perceptual similarity, we use an image-based search system that computes similarity based on low-level perceptual features. We hypothesize that perceptual similarity at the level of color, shape, texture, orientation, and the like, between the source and the target image facilitates metaphorical comprehension and aids creative interpretation. We present three experiments, two of which are eye-movement studies, to demonstrate that in the interpretation and generation of visual metaphors, perceptual similarity between the two images is recognized at a subconscious level, and facilitates the search for creative conceptual associations in terms of emergent features. We argue that the capacity to recognize perceptual similarity—considered to be a hallmark of creativity—plays a major role in the creative understanding of metaphors.
(Utorok 17.04.2018 o 0:00)
Mgr. Martin Madaras, PhD. (Katedra aplikovanej informatiky FMFI UK v Bratislave & Skeletex Research, s.r.o.) , domovská stránka
Capturing the movement of a human body is a challenging problem. The surface of the body deforms in a complex way that is hard to be described in a precise way. Therefore, in computer graphics, this complex deformation is usually approximated by the so-called animation skeleton. The skeleton segments the body surface into a set of several rigid areas, and surface deformation of the body is approximated by a rigid transformations of the skeleton. The topic becomes even more challenging if we want to capture not only the movement, but also the point cloud frames of the body, and later reconstruct the whole 3D model of the subject. Since the body can be in different poses each frame, the so-called non-rigid surface fusion has to be performed. This step consists of transforming each point cloud into a normalized pose, where the individual surface sheets need to be stitched. Finally, we would like to reconstruct the 3D model of the subject and transform it into a desired pose. Having a single camera only, a visible surface area is limited, and thus the deformations on the back faced body parts need to be approximated. This can be be either computed using physical simulation that is very time and power consuming, or approximated using machine learning and statistical models.
(Utorok 24.04.2018 o 0:00)
Mgr. Ing. Matúš Tuna (Centre for Cognitive Science, FMFI, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka
Artificial neural networks recently became the most successful approach in machine learning with many successful applications in various domains such as image recognition, machine translation, reinforcement learning or generative modeling. The majority of artificial neural network models are currently trained using the gradient descent method with an error backpropagation mechanism. However, the main disadvantage of these models is the required large number of training examples for achieving reasonable performance. This limits the applications to domains offering abundance of labelled training examples or, in the case of reinforcement learning, the large number of interactions with an environment makes it possible to learn the task in that environment. In this talk, we will explore the few-shot learning approach, requiring only a few labeled examples and review various few-shot learning methods based on artificial neural networks. We will also propose a novel approach to the few-shot learning approach called Categorical Siamese neural networks.