ICLM Journal Club
This Week
Aaron Blaisdell
Title: 'Causal Cognition in Rats'
Abstract: David Hume posed a dilemma: How do we derive cause-effect relationships in the absence of direct causal perception? His answer was that knowledge of the causal texture of the world was merely an inference (or illusion) derived from observed statistical regularities. Recent challenges from Philosophy, Statistics, and Psychology argue that we can go beyond the information given (i.e., contingency) by dissecting cause-effect relationships using our own actions (i.e., interventions) on the world. I will present evidence that like humans, rats can a) build causal models (i.e., causal maps) of the world using associative processes; b) derive causal inferences from causal maps and their interventions on them; and c) rely on their own sense of agency to derive predictions from interventions.
About Us
Introduction
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory (ICLM) is a multidisciplinary center of UCLA labs devoted to understanding the neural basis of learning and memory and its disorders. This will require a unified approach across different levels of analysis, including;
1. Elucidating the molecular cellular and systems mechanisms that allow neurons and synapses to undergo the long-term changes that ultimately correspond to 'neural memories'.
2. Understanding how functional dynamics and computations emerge from complex circuits of neurons, and how plasticity governs these processes.
3. Describing the neural systems in which different forms of learning and memory take place, and how these systems interact to ultimately generate behavior and cognition.
History of ICLM
The Integrative Center for Learning and Memory formally LMP started in its current form in 1998, and has served as a platform for many interactions and collaborations within UCLA. A key event organized by the group is the weekly ICLM Journal Club. For more than 10 years, graduate students, postdocs, principal investigators, and invited speakers have presented on topics ranging from the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, through computational models of learning, to behavior and cognition. Dean Buonomano oversees the ICLM journal club with help of student/post doctoral organizers. For other events organized by ICLM go to http://www.iclm.ucla.edu/Events.html.
Current Organizers:
Walt Babiec (O'Dell Lab) & Helen Motanis (Buonomano Lab)
Current Faculty Advisor:
Past Organizers:
i) Anna Matynia(Aug 2004 - Jun 2008) (Silva Lab)
ii) Robert Brown (Aug 2008 - Jun 2009) (Balleine Lab)
iii) Balaji Jayaprakash (Aug 2008 - Nov 2011) (Silva Lab)
iv) Justin Shobe & Thomas Rogerson (Dec 2011 - June 2013) (Silva Lab)
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