February 6, 2015 - 3:00 pm
This event is by invitation only.
Future of Life Institute
February 5, 2015 - 4:30 pm
Initial proposals (300–1000 words) due March 1, 2015 The Future of Life Institute, based in Cambridge, MA and headed by Max Tegmark (MIT), is seeking proposals for research projects aimed to maximize the future societal benefit of artificial intelligence while avoiding potential hazards. Projects may fall in the fields of computer science, AI, machine learning, public policy, law, ethics, economics, or education and outreach. This 2015 grants...
“Dahlia” by Katinka Matson | www.katinkamatson.com
January 21, 2015 - 5:45 pm
The Edge Foundation poses an annual questions to researchers and intellectuals. The Edge Question 2015 is “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?” CBMM Director Tomaso Poggio is one of the 191 contributors to have his response posted to Edge.org: “Turing++” Questions Recent months have seen an increasingly public debate taking form around the risks of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and in particular AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). A...
An image of neurons in a mouse hippocampus taken with expansion microscopy. Credit Ed Boyden, Fei Chen, Paul Tillberg/MIT
January 19, 2015 - 5:45 pm
Today’s New York Times article covers Prof. Ed Boyden’s new Expansion Microscopy research: Expansion Microscopy Stretches Limits of Conventional Microscopes by John Markoff New York Times “A new laboratory technique enables researchers to see minuscule biological features, such as individual neurons and synapses, at a nearly molecular scale through conventional optical microscopes.” Click here to read the full article >
Boyden, E., Chen, F. & Tillberg, P. / MIT / Courtesy of National Institutes of Health A slice of a mouse brain (left) was expanded by nearly five-fold in each dimension by adding a water-soaking salt. The result — shown at smaller magnification (right) for comparison — has its anatomical structures are essentially unchanged.
January 15, 2015 - 5:45 pm
by Ewen Callaway Nature, Vol. 517, 254, online January 09, 2015 January 15, 2015 doi:10.1038/nature.2015.16667   A recent article in Nature covers the Boyden Lab ExM research as presented by Prof. Ed  Boyden at SfN 2014: “Microscopes make living cells and tissues appear bigger. But what if we could actually make the things bigger? It might sound like the fantasy of a scientist who has read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland too many times, but the...
Expansion microscopy enables researchers to resolve details down to about 70 nanometers, while 300 nanometers was the previous limit with a conventional microscope. Images of a mouse brain segment enlarged (right) have greater resolution than those acquired using conventional microscopy without water expansion (left). Credit: Ed Boyden, Fei Chen, Paul Tillberg
January 15, 2015 - 5:30 pm
NSF Press Release 15-002 While most efforts to understand the brain focus on new technologies to magnify small anatomical features, engineers at the MIT-based Center for Brains, Minds and Machines have found a way to make brains physically bigger. The technique, which the researchers call expansion microscopy, uses an expandable polymer and water to swell brain tissue to about four and a half times its usual size, so that nanoscale structures...
Using a new technique that allows them to enlarge brain tissue, MIT scientists created these images of neurons in the hippocampus. Image: Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg
January 15, 2015 - 5:30 pm
MIT News has published an article covering the new expansion microscopy technique developed by Prof. Ed Boyden’s lab. MIT team enlarges brain samples, making them easier to image New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens. Anne Trafton | MIT News Office   “Beginning with the invention of the first microscope in the late 1500s, scientists have been trying to peer into preserved cells and tissues with...
A week at MIT; Workshop on quantitative methods in biology draws diverse undergrads from across the country.
January 13, 2015 - 5:30 pm
Jessica Fujimori | MIT News correspondent MIT News published an article on the annual Quantitative Methods Workshop led by Mandana Sassanfar. Pictured above is Prof. Ellen C. Hildreth with students attending the workshop. “The workshop, sponsored by the Department of Biology and the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, focused on how computer programming can apply to problems in biology and neuroscience.”...
Tejas Dattatraya Kulkarni
January 12, 2015 - 12:45 pm
In September 2014, the Siemens Corporation generously established the CBMM Siemens Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship will provide support, for one academic year, to an MIT graduate student whose research is focused on understanding human intelligence, and which bridges two of the main CBMM disciplines (computer science, cognitive science, and neuroscience.) Proposed research should contribute to CBMM goals of developing a computationally...
Workshop on Learning Theory, Dec. 18-20, 2014, Montevideo, Uruguay
December 18, 2014 - 9:00 am
December, 18-20, 2014
Montevideo, Uruguay
The workshop is part of the triennial Conference on Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM’14) organized by the Society for Foundations of Computational Mathematics hosted by the Universidad de la Republica in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The goal of the...
Task Dependence of Visual Representations
December 9, 2014 - 4:00 pm
Bill Lotter
Circuits for Intelligence – CBMM Thrust 2
Time permitting, Gabriel Kreiman will talk about “Spatiotemporal integration in visual recognition”
December 9, 2014 - 3:00 pm
Harvard University
The Road to Intelligence
December 4, 2014 - 6:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
A panel discussion with Geoffrey E. Hinton, Bob Desimone, Laura Schulz, Josh Tenenbaum and Patrick H Winston...
Prof. Jun Zhang
December 2, 2014 - 9:00 pm
Prof. Jun Zhang, Department of Psychology and Department of Mathematics University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Theory-of-mind (ToM) is the modeling of mental states (such as belief, desire, knowledge, perception) through recursive (“I think you think I think …”) type reasoning in order to plan one’s action or anticipate others’ action. Such reasoning forms the core of strategic analysis in the game-...
December 2, 2014 - 8:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Seminar Room, 46-5193
Scott Linderman (Harvard U.) 
Topic: Discovering interpretable structure in neural spike trains with negative binomial generalized linear models
Abstract: The steady expansion of neural recording capability provides exciting opportunities to discover unexpected patterns and gain new insights into neural computation.  Realizing...

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