8th Annual Conference on
Cognitive Computational Neuroscience
August 12-15, 2025
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Description of sponsor.
Supported by a gift from the Simons Foundation
Wednesday, August 13, 8:30 - 9:30 am, Room A0.01 (overflow A1.02/A1.03/C1.03)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, University of Tokyo
Director of Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Research Center
Embodiment is crucial for resolving the reliability and alignment challenges in contemporary AI. This is because it imposes consistent constraints on the entire agent-environment interactions and generate information structures without specifying their actual contents, and the constraints are common to those with similar embodiment. This concept must extend beyond mechanical properties and sensory information structure to include internal organs, metabolism, mental processes, and inter-agent interactions, evolving into "super-embodiment." Super-embodiment can address sensibilities, values, and morals, aligning AI with humans toward artificial humanity. This talk will demonstrate the emergence and development of behaviors and cognition from this extended embodiment framework through experiments with embodied models, including a simulated human fetus and internal organs integrated with the central nervous system.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi received Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo in 1991 and joined Electrotechnical Laboratory, AIST, MITI, Japan. From 1996 to 1997 he was a Visiting Scholar at MIT AI Lab. In 2001 he was appointed as an Associate Professor and then full Professor in 2005 at The University of Tokyo. He is also the Director of RIKEN CBS-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC) since 2012, the Director of Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Research Center of The University of Tokyo since 2016, and an affiliate member of International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN) of The University of Tokyo since 2018. He published over 300 refereed academic papers and received IJCAI Outstanding Paper Award, Gold Medal "Tokyo Techno-Forum21" Award, Best Paper Awards from Robotics Society of Japan, IEEE ROBIO T.-J. Tarn Best Paper Award in Robotics, Okawa Publications Prize, and other awards. He is a Fellow of Robotics Society of Japan, President of the Japan Society of Developmental Neuroscience, and a member of IEEE, Japan Society of Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society of Baby Science.
Friday, August 15, 5:00 - 6:00 pm, Room A0.01 (overflow A1.02/A1.03/C1.03)
Pieter R. Roelfsema
Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam; Institute de la Vision, Paris
Dr. Roelfsema will discuss the mechanisms that determine whether a weak visual stimulus will reach consciousness or not. If the stimulus is simple, early visual cortex acts as a relay station that sends the information to higher visual areas. If the stimulus arrives at a minimal strength, it will be stored in working memory. However, during more complex visual perceptions, which for example depend on the segregation of a figure from the background, early visual cortex’ role goes beyond a simple relay. It acts as a cognitive blackboard and conscious perception depends on it. Our results also inspire new approaches to create a visual prosthesis for the blind, by creating a direct interface with the visual brain. I will discuss how high-channel-number interfaces with the visual brain can be used to restore a rudimentary form of vision in blind individuals.
Pieter R. Roelfsema received his MD degree in 1991 and his PhD degree in 1995. He moved to the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam in 2002 where he was director between 2007 and 2023. He is professor at the Vrije Universiteit and at the Neurosurgery Dept. of the Amsterdam University Medical Center in Amsterdam. He received a NWO-VICI award (2008) and two ERC-Advanced grants (2014 and 2022). Roelfsema studies visual perception, plasticity, memory and consciousness in the visual system of experimental animals, humans, and with neural networks, examining how neurons in different brain areas work together during seeing and thinking and how networks of neurons configure themselves during learning. He develops the neurotechnology for visual prostheses for blind people, aiming to restore a rudimentary form of sight. Roelfsema coordinates the Dutch neurotechnology initiative NeuroTech-NL. In 2019 he co-founded the start-up company Phosphoenix that aims to develop a visual brain prosthesis for blind people.
Tuesday, August 12, 4:30 - 5:30 pm, Room A0.01 (overflow A1.02, A1.03, C1.03)
Anna Schapiro, University of Pennsylvania
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
There is a fundamental tension between storing discrete traces of individual experiences, which allows recall of particular moments in our past without interference, and extracting regularities across these experiences, which supports generalization and prediction in similar situations in the future. One influential proposal for how the brain resolves this tension is that it separates the processes anatomically into Complementary Learning Systems, with the hippocampus rapidly encoding individual episodes and the neocortex slowly extracting regularities over days, months, and years. But this does not explain our ability to learn and generalize from new regularities in our environment quickly, often within minutes. We have put forward a neural network model of the hippocampus that suggests that the hippocampus itself may contain complementary learning systems, with one pathway specializing in the rapid learning of regularities and a separate pathway handling the region’s classic episodic memory functions. This proposal has broad implications for how we rapidly learn novel information of specific and generalized types, which we test across statistical learning, inference, and category learning paradigms. We also explore how this system interacts with slower-learning neocortical memory systems, with empirical and modeling investigations into how hippocampal replay shapes neocortical representations during sleep. Together, the work helps us understand how structured information in our environment is initially encoded and how it then transforms over time.
Dr. Anna Schapiro received her B.S. from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Psychology and Neuroscience. She did a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research draws on neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational modeling techniques to investigate how humans learn and consolidate information across time.
Thursday, August 14, 4:15 - 6:00 pm, Room TBA
Brian Cheung, Dota Tianai Dong, Erin Grant, Ilia Sucholutsky, Lukas Muttenthaler, Siddharth Suresh
Abstract
Both natural and artificial intelligences form representations of the world that they use to reason, make decisions, and communicate. But how do we best compare and align these representations? There have been numerous debates around the measures used to quantify representational similarity. As of now, there is little consensus on which metric is best aligned(!) with the goal of identifying similarity between systems. This community event takes a hands-on approach to this challenge through a collaborative hackathon that centers on a decades-long debate: How universal vs. variable are the representations that intelligence systems, biological and artificial, form about the world? This debate has been the target of much recent research in representation learning in machine learning, and is also receiving substantial new attention from neuroscience and cognitive science. During the hackathon, Blue Teams will work to show model universality by finding (or creating) large populations of heterogeneous models that exhibit a high degree of representational alignment. Red Teams will highlight model variability by identifying differences in representations among homogeneous populations of models that are expected to align. The event will open with an interactive, hands-on tutorial on evaluating representational similarity, and will end with summative presentations from the winning teams and an engaging panel discussion with invited speakers.
Session Plan
This collaborative hackathon has two primary objectives: (1) to increase the reproducibility of research in representational alignment to establish shared knowledge through participation in the hackathon, and (2) to facilitate open discussion around identifying the most useful ways of measuring and controlling representational similarity, via presentations and panel discussion. The event begins with an interactive tutorial where organizers will provide starter code and demonstrate essential techniques—extracting model activations, identifying the similarities across different models, and analyzing stimuli that reveal meaningful differences between model representations. Next, the winning teams from the previous hackathon stage will showcase their methods and findings. After these presentations, participants will form new teams for the upcoming hackathon phase. The event concludes with an expert panel exploring challenges and future directions in representational alignment.
Wednesday, August 13, University of Amsterdam, REC-A building (main CCN 2025 conference venue)
Organizers: Susanne Haridi, Marcel Binz, Rodrigo Carrasco-Davis, Clementine Domine, Erin Grant, Alireza Modirshanechi
Speakers: Wilka Carvalho, Jacqueline Gottlieb, Klaus Oberauer, Gemma Roig, Martin Schrimpf, Greta Tuckute, Britta Westner
Organizers: Marieke Mur, Talia Konkle, Dan Yamins, Moritz Köster, Michael Arcaro, Daniel Dilks, Nick Turk-Browne, Rebecca Saxe, Rhodri Cusack
Organizers: Meenakshi Khosla, Nancy Kanwisher, Stefano Fusi, Niko Kriegeskorte, Tatiana Engel, Marcus Benna, David Klindt, Carsen Stringer
Wednesday, August 13, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, Room TBA
Organizers: Laurence Hunt, Jascha Achterberg, Chris Summerfield, Anna Szekely
Wednesday, August 13, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, Room TBA
Organizers: Paul Linton, Megan Peters, Steve Fleming, Lars Muckli
Wednesday, August 13, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, Room TBA
Organizers: Evelina Fedorenko, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Mick Bonner, Eghbal Hosseini, Brian Cheung, Jenelle Feather, Alex Williams, Tal Golan
Thursday, August 14, 4:15 - 6:00 pm, Room TBA
Organizers: Brian Cheung, Dota Tianai Dong, Erin Grant, Ilia Sucholutsky, Lukas Muttenthaler, Siddharth Suresh
Time and Room TBA
Organizers: Alessandro Gifford, Domenic Bersch, Marie St-Laurent, Basile Pinsard, Julie Boyle, Lune Bellec, Aude Oliva, Gemma Roig, Radoslaw Cichy
Monday, August 11, 11:30 am - 2:30 pm, Room A2.11
Organizers: Marcus Daghlian, Serge Dumoulin, Frans Cornelissen
This session explores cutting-edge computational approaches to capture visual properties using functional MRI in disorders of neurology (Haak) and ophthalmology (Daghlian). Next, we examine how computational approaches extend to visual behaviour (Schulte) and the auditory system, e.g., tinnitus (Moerel). Last, we examine how computational models provide insights into sight recovery using brain computer interfaces (Klink) and gene therapy (Dekker).
More information and registration.
Monday, August 11, 11:30 am - 6:00 pm, Room A2.07
Organizers: Atlas Kazemian, Yash Shah, Johannes Mehrer, Dan Yamins, Martin Schrimpf
Many recent computational models of the brain address “functional” features of neuronal activity – that is, information-processing patterns of units in the system, treated as abstracted function of stimulus input or a time variable. However, the real brain is a physical device embedded in space, exhibiting reliable spatial organization, strongly constrained by biophysical requirements, and subject to substantial size, weight, and power limitations. Recent work in NeuroAI has begun to address these key facts, leading to an array of exciting theoretical modeling approaches to the brain as a biophysical system; exposing a set of new and unsolved empirical questions; and enabling a spectrum of potentially high-impact real-world neural applications. This symposium will focus on each of these components, including cutting-edge presentations on theory, experiment and application; and across a spectrum of brain areas and systems.
More information and registration.
Monday, August 11, 11:30 am - 6:00 pm - Room A1.03
Organizers: Megan Peters, Steve Fleming, Doby Rahnev, Lucie Charles
The Metacognitive Science Meeting is a venue for interdisciplinary discussions around all aspects of metacognition, cross-cutting psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and computer science. Our community represents an entirely new model of scientific community building: a roving satellite meeting, designed to approach and synergistically mingle with relevant scientific communities across philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence on an annual cycle. Registration is requested for capacity monitoring purposes; walk-ins can likely be accommodated day-of as space permits.
More information and registration.
Monday, August 11, 11:30 am - 6:00 pm - Room A2.12
Organizers: Philip Kragel & Frederic Hopp
This workshop brings together researchers in computational cognitive neuroscience with shared interests in emotion and morality. It aims to explore how specific emotions (like anger or compassion) relate to moral judgments (such as harm or fairness), using cutting-edge tools like computational modeling and multivariate pattern analysis. The event features keynote lectures on decoding brain activity and modeling with neural networks, as well as collaborative, hands-on sessions using provided neuroimaging datasets. Participants will form research groups two months in advance and receive materials and software guidance via GitHub to prepare for analysis. To participate, attendees must sign up through the workshop’s GitHub page. The workshop emphasizes practical collaboration and aims to produce joint research publications. A follow-up online meeting in the fall will support continued progress and discussion. Ultimately, the workshop seeks to deepen our understanding of how emotion and morality are represented in the brain—and how this knowledge can be modeled across humans and machines.
More information and registration. For questions, please contact .
Monday, August 11, 3:00 - 6:00 pm, Room A2.08
Organizers: Manuel Molano-Mazón & Jorge Mejias
Advances in artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience are transforming our understanding of decision-making processes in the brain. This workshop will bring together experts and researchers to discuss cutting-edge methodological innovations at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI. We aim to explore how novel computational approaches can enhance our ability to study and model decision-making. Confirmed speakers include Chris Summerfield, Joao Barbosa, Giulia Crocioni, Manuel Molano-Mazón, and Jorge Mejias
Monday, August 11, 3:00 - 6:00 pm, Room A2.11
Organizers: Tessa Dekker, Lukas Vogelsang & H.Steven Scholte
This workshop bridges human cognitive development principles with AI visual learning systems. Starting with an overview of developmental psychology in neural network design, we'll examine curriculum design for structuring training data, architectural constraints that reflect developmental limitations, and evaluation metrics for measuring human-like learning trajectories. Through collaborative break-out sessions and a final panel discussion, participants will develop interdisciplinary research agendas aimed at creating neural networks that learn more like humans, revealing insights into efficient learning with minimal data.
More information and registration.
Monday, August 11, 3:00 - 6:00 pm, Room A2.09
Organizers: Sander Bohte & Marcel van Gerven
While the brain clearly is able to apply credit assignment, optimizing the wiring and neural properties to better behave in an ever-changing world, the underlying mechanism is an active topic of research. This workshop aims to bring together researchers working on neural learning algorithms that have increased biological plausibility, such as local approximations of error-backpropagation and/or alternative learning schemes that are compatible with what is known about learning in the brain. A select set of invited speakers will present their work, in addition to contributed posters. The aim is to highlight current developments and state-of-the-art, and also limitations, targeting both computational and theoretical neuroscientists working on the edge of AI, and vice versa.
More information and registration. Contributed posters are solicited with deadline June 8, sent by email to .
Monday, August 11, 3:00 - 6:00 pm, Room A1.02
Organizers: Ili Ma, Jessica Thompson, Anne Urai
We live in times when public trust in science is under threat, misinformation is rife, AI ethics are of increasing concern and climate change is increasingly affecting communities worldwide. How do scientists see ourselves and our role in this world, and can we use our skills for social good? This session will explore ways to to extend the impact of our scientific work beyond our laboratories and models, and will critically evaluate how to fulfil our responsibility as scientists during times of significant social and technological change.
This year, CCN is happy to complement our in-person conference with distributed, local meetups for those who are not travelling to Amsterdam. We provide the livestream, you host the event: simply book a room in your institution, fill out the form below, and get together with colleagues to watch and discuss the best science. You can of course add social events, local scientific events, or additional talks to your meetup if you like.
CCN 2025 meetups are recommended to improve community involvement and experience with the conference but ultimately are organized and hosted by individuals. You are responsible for deciding whether to take part in a local meetup as a host or participant, including your own assessment of the host and the location’s safety and suitability. CCN does not organize meetups, and cannot be held liable for activities or consequences of local meetups; this includes health and safety consequences. If you have concerns about a meetup host or location, either before the conference or afterwards, please provide details of your concerns via email to .
A: It is entirely up to you. The most bare-bones is simply to book a lecture hall/meeting space, turn on the CCN livestream channel, and watch together. You can choose to add food/drinks, opportunities for socializing, or even local scientific events (such a poster session or short talks). This is entirely up to you; make sure to communicate to your participants what they can expect.
A: It is up to you how you time your meetup - you can also choose to watch the recorded talks back during your day or even make a selection rather than watch all talks.
Register here to sign up as a meetup host: https://forms.gle/XKAx66MrwVUkfjuo9. Please first check on the map if there is not already a meetup near you, and consider teaming up.
Check out this map to view all currently registered meetups - click on any meetup for registration details!
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative for CCN 2025 to help offset costs of childcare at the annual meeting. These funds will make it easier for members with children to attend a wider range of meeting events.
Value: Up to $500 per family. In the event that the number of requests exceeds the funding available, preference will be given to applicants in the early stages of their careers.
Number: 6 awards.
Recipients can use funds to support childcare in the form that best serves the family. Due to logistical constraints, CCN will not be offering an in-house childcare program. Recipients will be responsible for organizing their own childcare solutions.
Eligible expenses for the budget can include:
The Local Organizing Committee recommends 24nannies, a Netherlands-based but globally oriented childcare service, for parents looking to hire babysitters or nannies during CCN in Amsterdam.
Applications for Childcare Awards are Closed. Awardees will be notified by email by June 15 20.
