Seminários em Neurociências Extraordinários 2012.1

Dia: Terça-Feira

Data: 26/06

Hora: às 14h

Local: Auditório da Biblioteca do ICe-UFRN:

Palestrante: Jacobo Sitt, MD, PhD
Unicog lab, INSERM U992CEA, Neurospin, Saclay
PICNIC lab, ICM research center, Paris

Título: “Just nod if you can hear me...”, lessons and applications from
discriminating conscious processing in sleep, anesthesia and DOC
patients

During this talk I will present a set of experiments set to
distinguish conscious processing using neuroimaging techniques
(magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography) without relying in
the conscious report of the subject.
Sleep, anesthesia and disorders of consciousness (DOC), represent the
most frequent ways for humans to lose consciousness (perhaps in order
of desirability). By studying the electrophysiological markers that
distinguish the boundaries between these conditions we can learn more
about the neurophysiology behind conscious processing and perhaps
apply this knowledge in the clinical practice.
Although communication is still the golden standard for assessing
consciousness, applying this approach in real-time and detecting
fluctuations in the patient score may help to identify windows of
opportunity for communication, and to enhance not only the clinical
treatment but also the patient quality of life.

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Dia: Terça-Feira

Data: 26/06

Hora: às 15h

Local: Auditório da Biblioteca do ICe-UFRN:

Palestrante: Diego Fernández Slezak, Ph.D.

Departamento de Física, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

Título: "OLPC@school -- Incorporating Information Technology in the Teaching
and Learning Cycle"

With the development of information technology, the contrast between
traditional educational approaches and real-world challenges is
becoming starker. Here we propose to help bridge this gap,
capitalizing on recent initiatives delivering low-cost laptops to
every primary and secondary school students.  This new educational
tool is produced at a very large scale -  in Uruguay the whole
population of elementary schools, some 400,000 children, are using the
same digital platform - with a great amount of new possibilities,
pushing a profound reformulation of teaching and learning. From the
perspective of information technology, the challenge is how to
interface with this vast corpus of cognitive development to convert
conceptual questions relevant to educational practice into
quantifiable, analytic queries. We propose a project to  create  a
Computerized-Module framework for educational software, including a
structure for information storage, access and analysis. The project
has three main objectives of progressive difficulty: 1) to develop the
scalable repository for educational games and applications, the
computerized-module framework; 2) datamining and analysis of
registered data which may reveal the underlying mechanisms of
thinking; and 3) to generate interventions in the educational process
of the child. The first seed of interventions rely on well established
knowledge from principles of cognitive science which have detected
basic bricks of human reasoning which include working memory,
arithmetic, attention and planning abilities.  The software is
conceived with an automatic upgrade procedure based on feedback
obtained from analysis of registered data, towards a more equitative
education, providing equal opportunities to every child.