Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

Community Event

Community Event – Conversations on Consciousness

Community Event

Wednesday, August 13, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Conversations on Consciousness: How the CCN Community Can Contribute
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Paul Linton1, Megan Peters2, Steve Fleming3, and Lars Muckli4, 1Columbia University, 2University of California, Irvine, 3University College London, 4University of Glasgow

Abstract:

The CCN Community works on a diverse set of topics from perception to cognition to action. But one question that has been relatively overlooked at CCN is consciousness or subjective experience. Our Community Event explores why this is, and how to address it. The key question is how we should think about consciousness in computational terms. This topic has recently come to the fore with discussions of consciousness in AI, but our focus is the human brain: what kinds of computations appear to correlate with consciousness, and how can we model them? But also, how can we be sure we’re tracking consciousness in the first place? Our event will focus on the progress made in three ongoing Templeton adversarial collaborations. But this Community Event will also be a critical evaluation of recent developments in consciousness science, and we ask the CCN Community to reflect on what we might have missed along the way.

Session plan:

Whilst the topics many of us study lend themselves to thinking about consciousness, we believe there are three reasons why consciousness has not played a larger role at CCN, all of which our Community Event seeks to address:

1. Theories: First, we may feel consciousness science is its own distinct subfield, with its own specialized knowledge. So, the first focus of our Community Event is educational: to bring the CCN Community up to speed with recent developments in consciousness science, so that all will be better equipped to engage critically.

2. Computational Models: Second, we may feel that computational approaches have little to say about consciousness. So, the second focus of our Community Event is computational: to highlight existing computational frameworks for consciousness, and draw on the expertise of the CCN Community to develop new ways of thinking about consciousness in computational terms.

3. Experiments: Third, we may feel that collaborations between Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Artificial Intelligence in the context of consciousness science are already catered to by Templeton adversarial collaborations on consciousness. But CCN is uniquely placed to inform these collaborations, and to inform and participate in new lines of research they may inspire. So, the third focus of our Community Event is collaborative: presenting the work of three ongoing Templeton collaborations, and opening the discussion to the CCN Community with the aim of informing future work.

 

 

 

 

Community Event – Naturalistic Games…: A Project Co-Design Workshop

Community Event

Wednesday, August 13, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, 

Naturalistic Games as a Benchmark to Bridge Cognitive Science, Computational Neuroscience and AI: A Community Led, Round-Table Discussion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jascha Achterberg1, Laurence Hunt1, Chris Summerfield1, and Anna Székely2, 1University of Oxford, 2Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Abstract:

In this round-table workshop, we will discuss video games as a potential testbed for comparing biological and artificially intelligent behaviour. Video games capture much of the complexity of real-world decision tasks, such as vast state spaces, multi-step action sequences, interactions with objects and agents, and dynamic interleaving of planning and execution. Yet crucially, they also present an experimentally and computationally tractable testbed which allows for experimental manipulations, and comparison of human vs. machine behaviour and internal computations. We will have short talks from researchers currently using video games as a tool for understanding human and artificial cognition. One central aim will be to identify robust, reliable benchmarks with which human and artificial agents can be compared. The main outcome of this workshop, if successful, would be a co-designed project that is shaped by input from across the CCN community, where resulting data analysis/modelling is shared across a number of labs.

Session plan:

Our workshop will begin with an opportunity for participants to give ‘pitch talks’ (30-45 minutes) in which they pitch an idea about games, benchmarks, or current ongoing research that they consider relevant. If you are attending CCN and would like to be considered for a pitch talk, please fill out our online form.

Participants will then be split into breakout groups (~45 minutes), to discuss the following questions:

- 'what constitutes a useful benchmark against which to evaluate human behavioural and/or neural data during naturalistic gameplay?'

- ‘what unique questions in cognitive science/neuroscience/AI might be addressed using naturalistic games that are difficult to address using traditional experimental design?’

- ‘what computational models are most appropriate for comparison with human behavioural and neural data in studying naturalistic behaviour with games?’

We will then reconvene for a collective discussion for the remaining time, and summarise how this might inform a future, co-designed data collection project.

 

 

 

 

Community Event

Community Event

Date: August 14, 2025

Location: University of Amsterdam, REC-A building (main CCN 2025 conference venue)

Re^3-Align Collaborative Hackathon

Organizers: Brian Cheung, Dota Tianai Dong, Erin Grant, Ilia Sucholutsky, Lukas Muttenthaler, Siddharth Suresh

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community Events

Community Events

Date: August 13, 2025

Location: University of Amsterdam, REC-A building (main CCN 2025 conference venue)

Universality and Idiosyncrasy of Perceptual Representations

Organizers: Evelina Fedorenko, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Mick Bonner, Eghbal Hosseini, Brian Cheung, Jenelle Feather, Alex Williams, Tal Golan

 

Conversations on Consciousness: How the CCN Community Can Contribute

Organizers: Paul Linton, Megan Peters, Steve Fleming, Lars Muckli

 

Naturalistic Games as a Benchmark to Bridge Cognitive Science, Computational Neuroscience and AI: A Project Co-Design Workshop

Organizers: Laurence Hunt, Jascha Achterberg, Chris Summerfield, Anna Szekely

 

The algonauts project 2025 challenge

Organizers: Alessandro Gifford, Domenic Bersch, Marie St-Laurent, Basile Pinsard, Julie Boyle, Lune Bellec, Aude Oliva, Gemma Roig, Radoslaw Cichy

The Algonauts Project, first launched in 2019, is on a mission to bring biological and machine intelligence researchers together on a common platform to exchange ideas and pioneer the intelligence frontier. Inspired by the astronauts’ exploration of space, “algonauts” explore human and artificial intelligence with state-of-the-art algorithmic tools, thus advancing both fields.

The Algonauts Project 2025 challenge focuses on predicting responses in the human brain as participants perceive complex multimodal naturalistic movies. To enable data-hungry modeling, the challenge runs on data from CNeuroMod (https://www.cneuromod.ca/), the largest suitable brain dataset available–almost 80 hours of neural recordings for each of 4 human participants. To ensure the robustness and relevance of results, the challenge features a model selection process based on out-of-distribution evaluation.

During the first part of this session, the Algonauts project and challenge will be introduced, followed by talks by this year’s challenge winners. The second part of the session will be a panel discussion on challenges in cognitive computational neuroscience moderated by Alessandro Gifford, including the participation of Andreas Tolias, Fabian Sinz, Martin Schrimpf, Gemma Roig, and Radoslaw Cichy. The audience participation in the panel discussion is encouraged through both in-person contributions or digital engagement.

More information at https://algonautsproject.com/

 

 

 

Cognitive Computational Neuroscience