Chers membres de l'École de psychologie,
 
Notre deuxième colloque pour 2019-2020 aura lieu le lundi 20 janvier à 14h30 dans FSS 5028.
 
Notre présentateur est Dr. Jean-Philippe Thivierge, professeur en psychologie, Université d'Ottawa (titre et résumé en anglais ci-bas).
 
Du café sera servi; apportez votre tasse!  
 
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Dear members of the School of Psychology  
 
Our second colloquium for 2019-2020 will take place on Monday, January 20th at 2:30pm in FSS 5028.
Our speaker is Dr. Jean-Philippe Thivierge, professor in psychology, University of Ottawa (title and abstract below).
 
Coffee will be served; bring your mug!
 

Towards a brain-inspired theory of cognition using recurrent networks
 
In recent years, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have opened the possibility of capturing the complex relationship between brain activity, thoughts, and behavior. In this talk, I will argue that novel approaches in this field fail to capture key aspects of learning. These shortcomings require more than minor changes to existing theories, as they represent fundamental limitations to a broad spectrum of models. I present a novel framework that addresses some, though not all, of these limitations. I show results of a novel "reservoir computing" model where information is distributed across a wide network of nodes whose activity reverberates onto itself. Preliminary results based on this framework capture the rapid one-shot learning typical of human behavior and show promising applications to artificial speech processing. This new framework will serve as a springboard for further brain-inspired models of AI that are grounded in cognitive, developmental, and social aspects of behavior.