2024-03-29 : INT-CONECT seminar by Joe MacInnes

“Casting a wide (neural) net: models and simulations of eye movements and attention”.


Date
2024-03-29 33:00
  • When: Friday, March 29th 14:30 to 15:30
  • Where: salle Gastaut (TBC)

During this INT/CONECT seminar, Dr Joe MacInnes will present his modelling work on “Casting a wide (neural) net: models and simulations of eye movements and attention

Abstract : Eye movements are an excellent proxy for visual attention, and offer a rich source of behavioural data. Decades of neuroscience and experimental results have provided many interesting artefacts that hint at underlying attentional mechanisms. Models and simulations of attention allow us the opportunity to implement our best theories and test them against a wide variety of experimental and imaging results.  Simulations of human eye movements, for example, can predict where we allocate attention, the temporal distributions of saccades and even the presence of attentional artifacts like Inhibition of Return, errors, anticipations and even virtual TMS lesions.  This talk will cover a couple of recent models that simulate attention and eye movements using deep learning neural nets, spiking network layers and diffusion models to simulate aspects, quirks and mechanisms of human attention.

Joe has an interdisciplinary PhD from Dalhousie University in Canada combining computer science (graphics and machine learning) with psychology (eye movements and attention). He has worked in psychology departments (University of Toronto, University of Aberdeen, and HSE University Moscow), computer science departments (Dalhousie University, Canada, St Mary’s University, Canada, and Swansea University Wales) and industry research (Data visualization and AI, Canada). He is currently a senior lecturer in AI at Swansea University department of computer science.
Laurent U Perrinet
Laurent U Perrinet
Researcher in Computational Neuroscience

My research interests include Machine Learning and computational neuroscience applied to Vision.