The subject of cognitive neuroscience is, in a broad sense, the human mind. Cognitive
neuroscience helps to understand how the human brain supports thought,
perception, affection, action, social process and other aspects of cognition
and behaviour. Questions about the mind are studied from different scientific
perspectives in philosophy, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and computer
science. Cognitive Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary approach to understand
the neural substrates of mental processes. It is a broad area where insights
from psychology, neurobiology, bioengineering, physics, computer science,
linguistics, mathematics and philosophy find relevance. Recently, the Cognitive
Neuroscience Lab of Department of Biological Sciences, BITS Pilani, K K Birla
Goa Campus organised a two-day national workshop on ‘Experimental Methods in
Cognitive Neuroscience’. The workshop was held on December 15 and 16, 2017 at
the campus.
The workshop was inaugurated by Prof. Narayanan Srinivasan,
Head, Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS), University of
Allahabad; in presence of Prof. Raghurama G, Director, BITS Pilani K K Birla
Goa Campus; Organizing Secretary Dr. Veeky Baths, Cognitive Neuroscience Lab,
Department of Biological Sciences, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus and
Co-organiser Dr. Ramesh K Mishra, Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences
(CNCS), University of Hyderabad. Around 30 participants from various colleges
and universities from different parts of India attended the workshop.
Two technical demonstrations from Tobii and EGI were conducted
during the workshop. Tobii technologies are front runners in the field of Eye
Tracking manufacturing technologies. Vitasta India handles the Indian sales of
Tobii products. The workshop gave the audience a hands-on demonstration of the
screen based eye tracker and the mobile eye trackers to the participants. EGI
is one of the largest vendors of dense array EEG, EMG and other
neuro-observation systems. At the workshop, an EGI representative spoke about
the various offerings from EGI and also spoke about the success stories of
Neuroscience Labs across the world.
Topics
such as Neural Motor Control, Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, Introduction
to EEG and ERP studies, Computation modeling using Deep Learning, Neural
Representation of spatial maps in the brain, Eye Tracking, Neural Organisation
of the Visuomotor Learning were discussed at the workshop.
