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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium : To tap or not to tap: Theoretical and cognitive ne
 urosciences to explain smartphone behaviour
DTSTART:20170529T161500
DTEND:20170529T173000
DTSTAMP:20260427T200820Z
UID:0e70c9a5d2c260ad96e037d622462d9046c4f72148ab2edf77756e3c
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Par : Jean-Pascal Pfister and Arko Ghosh - ETH\, University of
  Zurich\nVideo of the talk\n\nAbstract :\nDiscovering the fundamental prin
 ciples that govern human behavior is a major and exciting challenge. The r
 ise of smartphones has created unprecedented opportunities for cognitive 
 neuroscience to study unconstrained human behavior reversing the tradition
 al focus on highly artificial laboratory experiments. For theoretical neu
 roscience\, this wealth of digital data represents a stimulating opportuni
 ty to develop a new class of computational models that focus on natural be
 havior.  In this talk\, we combine the cognitive and theoretical approach
 es to explain the timing of touchscreen interactions observed in the real
  world. We illustrate this approach with two specific examples.\n \nFirst
 \, we develop an optimality framework that captures the relationship betwe
 en the statistics of touchscreen events during information gathering  (s
 uch as checking the news or the weather forecast) and during information s
 haring (such as writing a text message). In a second study\, by combinin
 g ideas from priority-based decision process developed in communication sc
 iences with the unconstrained nature of smartphone behaviour we developed
  a theoretical framework to study the scale invariant dynamics of touchscr
 een interactions. By applying this framework\, we found that smartphone 
 use is of a higher priority than other tasks for 76% of users. \n \nBoth
  of these examples offer new perspectives in computational neuroscience b
 y rising the question of scale invariance in existing paradigms such as in
  reinforcement learning. The discovery of statistical patterns in touchsc
 reen interactions also yields a clear line of questions for cognitive neur
 osciences on whether these patterns are rigid or plastic\, and how cognit
 ive processes are differently engaged in information gathering and sharin
 g.  We conclude that the areas of communication sciences\, theoretical n
 eurosciences and cognitive neurosciences must merge to comprehensively un
 derstand and benefit from the surge of high-resolution behavioural data ma
 de available through modern digital interactions. \n\nBio :\nThis will b
 e a joint presentation by Jean-Pascal Pfister and Arko Ghosh. Jean-Pascal 
 is currently a SNF Professor and leads the Theoretical Neuroscience group
  at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) at ETH and University of Zuric
 h and Arko is also at INI and his group focuses on how the human brain pa
 rticipates in smartphone behavior.
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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