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Spring Research Day (SRD) is an annual all-day, university-wide symposium that showcases the work of graduate students. This year, we are inviting non-CCS student members to participate in sharing their cognitive studies alongside CCS student members.

All University of Minnesota graduate students are invited to submit abstracts and preferences to Cindy Marceau cogsci@umn.edu for a 10 or 20-minute oral presentation. Abstract submission deadline. Abstracts can be in any style, but the length should be kept to a max of 1 page double-spaced. Questions should be directed to Nicole Scott scott787@umn.edu.

March 13 — Abstract acceptance notification

 

Spring Research Day 2015 Keynote speaker

Dr. Richard Aslin
Director of the University of Rochester Center for Brain Imaging.

"Neural correlates of statistical learning in adults and infants"

 

Abstract:
Since the initial demonstrations of statistical learning two decades ago, a variety of questions have been raised about the neural mechanism(s) that support these behavioral findings. Studies of statistical learning in adults using fMRI have focused on the outcome of the implicit extraction process -- i.e., differential activation to structured and unstructured test items during a post-learning recognition phase. I will summarize several fMRI studies that focus on the learning phase itself, using both auditory (temporal) stimuli and visual (temporal and spatial) stimuli. Because fMRI is extremely difficult to use with infants, I will also summarize some recent work that uses fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) to study basic aspects of learning in 6-month-olds. These findings suggest some fundamental differences between how the infant and adult brain respond to sensory information, as well as some commonalities about how the infant and adult brain respond to violations of learned stimulus co-occurrences.