Enquiries to Alex Woolgar [email protected] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Alexandra Woolgar <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:15 PM Subject: [CCD MQ Staff] [CCD MQ] Prof. John Duncan - Talk Fri 21st March, 12 noon
The Perception in Action Research Centre (PARC) is delighted to be hosting *Professor John Duncan* (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, and University of Oxford) who is a world authority on brain mechanisms of attention and cognition. Author of multiple Nature papers and major theoretical advances, he's also a fantastic speaker! Next Friday, 21st March, he will be giving the Department of Cognitive Science / CCD seminar - all welcome. *Title*: A core brain system in assembly of cognitive episodes *Date*: Friday 21st March, 12 noon, followed by light refreshments. *Location*: Level 1 Lecture Theatre, Australian Hearing Hub Building, Macquarie University http://www.ccd.edu.au/events/seminars/abstract.php?abstract=445 *Abstract*: How does the brain create human intelligence? One insight comes from brain imaging studies, revealing a distributed neural system, within the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, that is active during all kinds of cognitive challenges, as if providing a general resource for effective cognition. Support for this idea comes from strong activity in this "multiple-demand" or MD system in standard tests of fluid intelligence, important because success in these tests predicts success in all kinds of other activities, either in the laboratory or everyday life. All human cognition, I argue, is controlled in a series of attentional episodes, breaking complex problems into simpler, more solvable sub-problems. Based on behavioural, neuropsychological, brain imaging and single neuron data, I suggest that the core function of MD cortex is to produce this structure of attentional episodes, allowing complex cognition to be assembled from simple components and underpinning the flexiblity and power of human intelligence. See you there! Alex -- Dr. Alexandra Woolgar ARC DECRA Research Fellow Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders Department of Cognitive Science Macquarie University, NSW 2109 T: +61 (0) 2 9850 2948 (direct line) E: [email protected] <[email protected]> -- Professor John Sutton Deputy Head, Department of Cognitive Science Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 4132 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.johnsutton.net/ http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/ http://mq.academia.edu/JohnSutton
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