Posts
Starting 2021 With Strong Motivation
Happy New Year's from The ECSU team! With 2021 here, we are hard at work getting things together to have a productive and powerful year. We are expecting phenomenal things in 2021.
Hiring! Data Scientist
The ECSU team is in search of a data scientist who has expertise in experimental design, statistics, and analysis of nonlinear time series, such as EEG, physiology, and body movement.
More information can be found here.
Hiring! Neuroscientist with EEG expertise
Currently, the ECSU is looking for a talented neuroscientist with EEG expertise to work on a 3-year long project. The position will include integrating brain-body hyperscanning and HCl to assist in the development of social-interaction-based early detection system for schizophrenia.
More information can be found here.
Dyadic Interactions in a Comparative Perspective workshop
Join ECSU this afternoon as we host a workshop on Dyadic Interactions in a Comparative Perspective. Information on the workshop can be found here.
Tokyo ALIFE 2020 Session 4 | Symbiotic View of Life
Tom Froese, among other speakers, come together to discuss a different view of life. That we are simply a member that is part of an amazingly large ecosystem. You can watch the session here.
ALife looks at exploration of new thoughts, theories, and ideas, while also focusing on Open-Ended Evolution - how life continuously and creatively evolves.
Season's greetings from The ECSU Team
Happy Halloween to all! Hope the holidays were scary and fun for everyone!
Open position for Postdoctoral Fellow (Project Researcher) (Tsuji Laboratory)
The IRCN Babylab (Tsuji lab) at University of Tokyo is seeking a postdoctoral candidate for the transdisciplinary project “Tracking developing sensitivity to dyadic interactions” in collaboration with the Softbank Beyond AI Institute and Tom Froese (Embodied Cognitive Science unit, OIST). The goal of this project is to develop a gaze-based minimal virtual reality paradigm to identify infants’ sensitivity to real-time, gaze-mediated dyadic interactions.
New article on Embodied Cognition has been released
The Articel The Feeling Is Mutual: Clarity of Haptics-Mediated Social Perception Is Not Associated With the Recognition of the Other, Only With Recognition of Each Other from Tom Froese, Leonardo Zapata-Fonseca, Iwin Leenen, and Ruben Fossion gives further reasoning on why social interactions matter and discusses that our perceptual experiences are shaped by how we interact with one another.
Abstract
New Papers and Commentary Out Now in Constructivist Foundations Journal
Two papers and a commentary are now displayed in the Constructivist Foundations Journal, featuring lab members Manuel Heras-Escribano and Laura Mojica.
Manuel's addition to the journal include:
Papers published in the Artificial Life Conference Proceedings
Three papers have been succesfully posted in The 2020 Conference on Artificial Life by members of the lab. More information can be found here.
The three papers from the lab are:
Reflecting on experiences of social distancing...
What is the pandemic experience like? Our first pass at characterizing its phenomenology, out now in the Lancet!
Poster accepted at International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science
ECSU Special Research student Georgina Montserrat Resendiz Benhumea is going to present her research at the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science held in Oktober of 2020!
Blog Post on extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com
Visiting Researcher Manuel Heras-Escribano published a Blog Post relating to his recent paper on the evolutionary role of affordances on the extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com.
New Paper by former special research student Ana Lucía Valencia
The paper by former Special research student Ana Lucía Valencia and Tom Froese explores and doings so explores
Inter-brain neural synchronization and its implications for theories of human consciousness
New Paper out by visiting researcher Lorena Lobo from UAM
The paper written by visiting researcher Lorena Lobo and her research group at UAM in Spain, focusses on Dynamic Touch as Common Ground for Enactivism and Ecological Psychology to show
New Article on Action in Perception
In the Article we propose an experimental approach for putting the enactive theory of perception on more solid empirical foundations. "Where Is the Action in Perception? An Exploratory Study With a Haptic Sensory Substitution Device"
New Paper by visiting researcher Manuel Heras-Escribano
ECSU visiting researcher from spain, Manuel Heras-Escribano, published a new paper titled "The evolutionary role of affordances: ecological psychology, niche construction, and natural selection".
In the paper ecological psychology meets niche construction theory, pointing to a new synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary biology.
New Preprint on depression and schizophrenia
Temporality and affectivity in depression and schizophrenia: Commentary on Lenzo and Gallagher
Tom Froese
New Article on unsupervised learning
New article out! Our model leads to a new hypothesis about the function of sleep in the nematode worm. "Unsupervised Learning Facilitates Neural Coordination Across the Functional Clusters of the C. elegans Connectome". It was published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI and can be found here.
Christin Puthur won Fake Life Recognition Contest Award
Phd. Student Christin Puthur, won the the first Place of the Fake Life Recognition Contest Award, with her work done during her rotation in the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit.
KICKS 2020 Application was granted
Dr. Froese's project proposal "Gaze-based minimal virtual reality paradigm for tracking developing sensitivity to dyadic interactions" was selected for funding. The project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Sho Tsuji at the International Research Center for Neurointelligence of the University of Tokyo.
Can AI become conscious
The first interview about our new unit in the Japanese press got released!
In the Interview with Froese and Tani they discuss wether AI can become conscious... the article is in japanese and was published by the ITmedia news. You can find it here.
Froese will be invited speaker at Conference dedicated to Francisco Varela
Froese will give a talk as an invited speaker at a conference dedicated to Francisco Varela, held in France at the "Centre culturel international de Cerisy".
New article on perceptional crossing
The new article titled "Investigating real-time social interaction in pairs of adolescents with the Perceptual Crossing Experiment" reveals in the largest perceptual crossing study yet, that when adolescents engage in mutually responsive embodied interaction their social awareness is heightened.
Froese to give invited talk at TOKYO ALIFE 2020
Froese will give a talk as an invited speaker at the TOKYO ALIFE 2020.
He will be accompanied by several members of his Unit, who will attend the academic part of the event.
New preprint on schizophrenia
Lost in the socially extended mind: Genuine intersubjectivity and disturbed self-other demarcation in schizophrenia
Tom Froese and Joel Krueger