Invited Talks

Why Understanding Brain-Mind Requires 6-Discipline Knowledge

Juyang Weng, Michigan State University

Abstract

In this talk, I will overview the framework of Developmental Network (DN) and its experimental embodiments, WWN-1 through WWN-6, along with some support from the six disciplines --- biology, neuroscience, psychology (including cognitive science), computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics. I will emphasize an overarching computational model about how the brain-mind works. The model proposes 5+1 necessary conceptual "chunks" for this brain-mind model: development, architecture, area, space, time plus modulation. The experimental results presented indicate the surprising powerfulness of some simple biological mechanisms like Hebbian style synapse updates, activity-based synapse maintenance, and cell-based modulation. They explain why action output is not only output and why self-generated actions are critical for the brain to attend only a subpart of sensory stimuli and temporal context.

Short Biography

Juyang (John) Weng is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Cognitive Science Program, and the Neuroscience Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. He received his BS degree from Fudan University in 1982, his MS and PhD degrees from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985 and 1989, respectively, all in Computer Science. His research interests include computational biology, computational neuroscience, computational developmental psychology, biologically inspired systems, computer vision, audition, touch, behaviors, and intelligent robots. He is the author or coauthor of over two hundred fifty research articles. He is a Fellow of IEEE, an editor-in-chief of International Journal of Humanoid Robotics and an associate editor of the new IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development. He has chaired and co-chaired some conferences, including the NSF/DARPA funded Workshop on Development and Learning 2000 (1st ICDL), 2nd ICDL (2002), 7th ICDL (2008), 8th ICDL (2009), and INNS NNN 2008. He was the Chairman of the Governing Board of the International Conferences on Development and Learning (ICDLs) (2005-2007, http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/-triesch/icdl/), chairman of the Autonomous Mental Development Technical Committee of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2004-2005), an associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence, an associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Image Processing.