Public Dialogues

YHouse continues its program of lectures, events, and conversations on exciting and provocative topics at a number of venues around New York City.

Consciousness Club NYC

YHouse invites you to the Consciousness Club, a study group to promote broadly transdisciplinary discussions on the neural and computational bases of consciousness, and how these concepts can be applied to other fields of interest. Our weekly meetings are for you if you are into awareness, science, technology, philosophy, art, and design.

For more information and meeting schedule, check out our Facebook page, or tune in to our Twitter updates.

Although the meetings are open to all, we encourage technical and scientific discussions for this series of meetings.

Cognition Lunch Salon

YHouse continues to organize informal Lunch Salon events hosted by the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, N.J., West Building Seminar Room, 2nd floor. The format is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition. This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

  • Institute of Advanced Study (map)
  • 1 Einstein Drive
  • Princeton, NJ, 08540
  • United States

Cognition Lunch Salon: How Does the Brain Wire up Itself on the Fly?

Presenter: Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology, Japan)

Abstract: The standard paradigm in functional brain imaging is to ask subjects to perform tasks requiring a certain computation or not, to see which brain areas are more activated, and to conclude that those areas subserve the computation. However, we do not really know why and how those specific brain areas can be activated and connected when they are needed. As deep learning provides solutions to specific computations like image recognition and language processing, how to select and combine those networks as needed in different tasks and situations is a critical challenge in general and autonomous artificial intelligence. In this talk, we will explore possible anatomical and computational mechanisms that realize modularity and compositionality of the brain.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org