#3 ESI SyNC 2023: Bats, memory & interdisciplinary science
09/26/23 • 132 min
A couple of weeks ago, I visited the ESI SyNC 2023 conference in at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) in Frankfurt, Germany. Their topic was "Linking hypotheses: where neuroscience, computation, and cognition meet".
During the conference, I got talking to Yossi Yovel (Tel-Aviv University) about how different bat species navigate, what their vocalizations tell us about language evolution, and discussed his recent paper on whether we will ever be able to talk to animals. On the last point, I have some strong thoughts - thoughts including Wittgenstein and crows (see my own article here).
I also chat with Francisco Garcia-Rosales (ESI) on his poster about oscillations in the bat auditory and frontal cortex, and how bats and marmosets are really good animal models for speech (and maybe language).
Sarah Robins is a philosopher at Purdue University. Based of fMRI studies, many neuroscientists have grouped memory and imagination as a single phenomena. Sarah has been busy disentangling the two and we discuss how constructivist accounts of memory might have gone too far when abandoning memory traces.
David Poeppel (ESI) has a lab on auditory cognition, music, speech and language and how they map to neurobiology. Yet, going beyond that David has some intriguing thoughts on what's missing in neuroscience more generally. We dig deep into why we need a theory of memory storage/retrieval ("engram renaissance") and how to do interdisciplinary science.
For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at:
https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod03
- Yossi's Website
- Twitter: @YovelBatLab
- Yossi's talk available here in October-ish
- Mentioned books/papers:
- Genzel et al., 2018 - Neuroethology of bat navigation paper
- Yovel et al., 2023 - AI and the Doctor Dolittle challenge paper
- Amit et al., 2023 - Bat vocal sequences enhance contextual information independently of syllable order paper
- Khait et al., 2023 - Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative paper
- My article: Talking to a crow will be possible in 50 years
- Francisco's LinkedIn
- Twitter: @fgarciaro92
- Mentioned books/papers:
- García-Rosales et al., 2023 - Oscillatory waveform shape and temporal spike correlations differ across bat frontal and auditory cortex preprint
- Sarah's Website
- Twitter: @SarahKRobins
- Sarah's talk available here in October-ish
- Mentioned books/papers:
- Robins, 2022 - Episodic memory is not for the future book chapter
- Ménager et al., 2022 - Modeling human memory phenomena in a hybrid event memory system paper
- Robins, 2023 - The 21st century engram paper
- Brigard, 2023 - Counterfactual Thinking paper
- David's Website
- Twitter: @davidpoeppel
- Mentioned:
- Gallistel, 2021 - The physical basis of memory paper
- Poeppel et al., 2022 - We don’t know how the brain stores anything, let alone words paper
- Recent talk by Hessam Akhlaghpour on an RNA-Based Theory of Natural Universal Computation
- My Twitter
A couple of weeks ago, I visited the ESI SyNC 2023 conference in at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) in Frankfurt, Germany. Their topic was "Linking hypotheses: where neuroscience, computation, and cognition meet".
During the conference, I got talking to Yossi Yovel (Tel-Aviv University) about how different bat species navigate, what their vocalizations tell us about language evolution, and discussed his recent paper on whether we will ever be able to talk to animals. On the last point, I have some strong thoughts - thoughts including Wittgenstein and crows (see my own article here).
I also chat with Francisco Garcia-Rosales (ESI) on his poster about oscillations in the bat auditory and frontal cortex, and how bats and marmosets are really good animal models for speech (and maybe language).
Sarah Robins is a philosopher at Purdue University. Based of fMRI studies, many neuroscientists have grouped memory and imagination as a single phenomena. Sarah has been busy disentangling the two and we discuss how constructivist accounts of memory might have gone too far when abandoning memory traces.
David Poeppel (ESI) has a lab on auditory cognition, music, speech and language and how they map to neurobiology. Yet, going beyond that David has some intriguing thoughts on what's missing in neuroscience more generally. We dig deep into why we need a theory of memory storage/retrieval ("engram renaissance") and how to do interdisciplinary science.
For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at:
https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod03
- Yossi's Website
- Twitter: @YovelBatLab
- Yossi's talk available here in October-ish
- Mentioned books/papers:
- Genzel et al., 2018 - Neuroethology of bat navigation paper
- Yovel et al., 2023 - AI and the Doctor Dolittle challenge paper
- Amit et al., 2023 - Bat vocal sequences enhance contextual information independently of syllable order paper
- Khait et al., 2023 - Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative paper
- My article: Talking to a crow will be possible in 50 years
- Francisco's LinkedIn
- Twitter: @fgarciaro92
- Mentioned books/papers:
- García-Rosales et al., 2023 - Oscillatory waveform shape and temporal spike correlations differ across bat frontal and auditory cortex preprint
- Sarah's Website
- Twitter: @SarahKRobins
- Sarah's talk available here in October-ish
- Mentioned books/papers:
- Robins, 2022 - Episodic memory is not for the future book chapter
- Ménager et al., 2022 - Modeling human memory phenomena in a hybrid event memory system paper
- Robins, 2023 - The 21st century engram paper
- Brigard, 2023 - Counterfactual Thinking paper
- David's Website
- Twitter: @davidpoeppel
- Mentioned:
- Gallistel, 2021 - The physical basis of memory paper
- Poeppel et al., 2022 - We don’t know how the brain stores anything, let alone words paper
- Recent talk by Hessam Akhlaghpour on an RNA-Based Theory of Natural Universal Computation
- My Twitter
Previous Episode
#2 Saeedeh Sadeghi & Irena Arslanova: Heart and time perception
This episode, I talk to Saeedeh Sadeghi (Cornell University) and Irena Arslanova (Royal Holloway - London) about the heart and time perception. If you have ever been in a car accident, you might have felt as if time was slowing down. Some previous studies have tried to explain this phenomenon and argued that a state of 'arousal' may slow down time (subjectively). It's a bit more complicated than that. This year, Saeedeh and Irena published two papers showing how not average heart rate but heart dynamics on the sub-second scale influence time perception. Within a single cardiac cycle, time may contract and expand. We go in-depth on the methodology and findings of their papers and make links to interoception, predictive coding, meditation, breathing, psychoactive substances, and the many time perception theories out there. At the end, we also talk about science communication and their future research plans.
Full show notes (with extra figures):
https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/home/post/pod02
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - Saeedeh's and Irena's background
(00:05:09) - Does 'arousal' slow down time?
(00:12:20) - Virtual Reality subway study
(00:15:58) - Orienting response in evolution and pregnancy
(00:20:57) - Phenomenology of orienting response vs meditation
(00:27:52) - Temporal bisection task & methodology
(00:35:55) - Heart anatomy, systole and diastole explained
(00:40:34) - Subjective time contracts and expands within each heartbeat
(00:53:28) - How sub-second heart dynamics interact with average heart rate
(01:02:43) - Oscillations & striatal beat frequency model
(01:08:24) - Individual differences in interoception and heart-rate variability
(01:12:16) - Heart-brain communication & the insula as an integrator
(01:26:32) - Question by Josh Goheen on how breathing modulates the heart
(01:32:19) - Psychoactive substances and slowing of breath
(01:37:11) - Neural time perception theories (Roseboom, Tsao, Buonomano)
(01:46:41) - Time tracking in retrospective and prospective memory
(01:50:53) - Science communication with the public & future directions
(01:59:53) - Outro
Saeedeh Sadeghi
- Twitter: @SdSadeghi1
- Website
- Wrinkles in subsecond time perception are synchronized to the heart (2023)
- Affective experience in a virtual crowd regulates perceived travel time (2022)
Irena Arslanova
- Twitter: @irena_arslanova
- Website
- Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat (2023)
- Seeing Through Each Other’s Hearts: Inferring Others’ Heart Rate as a Function of Own Heart Rate Perception and Perceived Social Intelligence (2022)
Josh Goheen
My BSc dissertation: Graph-driven comparative phenomenology of altered time perception in over 20,000 trip reports URL
Other books/papers mentioned:
Marc Wittmann (2017): Felt Time: The Science of How We Experience Time book
Claudia Hammond (2013): Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception book
Craig, 2009: Emotional moments across time: a possible neural basis for time perception in the anterior insulas paper
Sarigiannidis et al., 2020: Anxiety makes time pass quicker while fear has no effect paper
Corcoran et al., 2023: Visceral afferent training in action paper
Review paper on striatal beat frequency model (2016)
Friston, 2018: Am I Self-Conscious? (Or Does Self-Organization Entail Self-Consciousness?)
Next Episode
#4 Paul Middlebrooks: BrainInspired & Podcasting
An episode with my favourite podcast host, Paul Middlebrooks. Paul and I met in Berlin, and talked about his journey away from (and back into) academia and why he started his podcast BrainInspired. Yes, there is a lot of podcast meta-talk in this episode. For example, how science podcasts give you a glimpse into another field (as an outsider) and some advice for fellow podcast hosts. We also get into productivity, self-learning and some big-picture questions on what's holding neuroscience back.
For Apple Podcast users, find books/papers links at: https://akseliilmanen.wixsite.com/akseli-ilmanen/post/pod04
- Paul's Podcast BrainInspired
- His NeuroAI course with topics ranging from the history of ANNs to explaining variational autoencoders
- Twitter: @pgmid
- Epistimones podcast by Paco Chow and Megan Lee
- My Twitter @akseli_ilmanen
- Email: akseli.ilmanen[at]gmail.com
- Brain Space Time Podcast, my blog, other stuff
- Music: Space News, License: Z62T4V3QWL
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:51) - Interesting conversations Paul had at the conference
(00:07:57) - The why and how of podcasting
(00:11:16) - Changing one's mind in science
(00:19:34) - Paul's NeuroAI course
(00:20:46) - Podcasts for self-learning & productivity fallacies
(00:26:15) - Podcast advice
(00:30:58) - Paul is back in academia
(00:38:48) - Neuroscience needs theory (beyond manifolds)
(00:45:50) - Saying thank you to Paul
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