The Potomac Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience is one of the officially sanctioned chapter organizations of the Society for Neuroscience. Representing approximately 700 active neuroscientists in the Capital area, the Potomac Chapter is proud to support neuroscience at area institutions ranging from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda to George Mason University. As Capitol Area neuroscientists, you benefit from the Chapter via the Grass Visiting Lecture Series, our communication of local neuroscience events via this web site and our email list, and most importantly via our public affairs activities on behalf of local neuroscientists. Please do support your chapter with your participation.
INFORMATION ON THE 2002 GRASS LECTURE
(DONALD GLASER ON THE VISUAL SYSTEM).
On this page, you'll find information about the Chapter, Chapter activities such as the Grass Visiting Lecture Series and local seminars. We welcome submissions via email.
Current Officers:
President:Giorgio A. Ascoli, Ph.D.
Secretary-Treasurer:
Past-President:
Potomac Chapter nominee Ms. Kimberly R. Byrnes, from the Anders Lab at USUHS, has been awarded the 2000 GRADUATE STUDENT TRAVEL AWARD of the Society for Neuroscience.
Past call for nominations
ONLINE MATERIAL:
Scientific Approaches to Consciousness: Reductionism Debated
Featuring Christof Koch, Allan Hobson, Patricia Churchland, David Chalmers (5/10/00). Video archive available here (you will need the free RealPlayer plug-in and a fast internet connection -- 56k modem or T1 line).Understanding Our Selves: The Science of Cognition
A "Video Archive" from the Wednesday, October 6, l999 presentations at The Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (you will need the free RealPlayer plug-in and a fast internet connection -- 56k modem or T1 line).
Past events: Neural Signaling colloquium at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC on February 16-17, 2001 [more information here].
Lecture Series:
Krasnow Institute Lecture Monday Afternoon Series
Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Sciences
NIH Neurosciences Lecture Series
2000 GRASS LECTURE
The Potomac Chapter has been awarded once more the Grass Traveling Scientist Fellowship. This Fall we have invited Dr. Daniel Dennett, Director of Tufts University's Center for Cognitive Studies, and author of Consciousness Explained, to discuss "Consciousness and Neuroscience" with interested fellows in the Washington DC area. The program included a plenary talk on Thursday, December 14, 2000 at the Krasnow Institute and a Brown Bag lunch Discussion on Friday, December 15. The title of the talk will be "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?".
[1] Potomac President Giorgio Ascoli introducing Dr. Dennett
[2] Dr. Dennett explaining consciousness
[3] and [4] An intense discussion followed the lecture
1999 GRASS LECTURE
The Potomac Chapter was awarded for the second year in row the Grass Traveling Scientist Fellowship. We invited Prof. Tomaso Poggio, an expert in Artificial Intelligence from MIT, to give a lecture on November 5th, 1999 at the Krasnow Institute on "Brain and Machines: learning to see".
- Abstract of Prof. Poggio Lecture
- Tomaso Poggio's Home Page
- Speaker's Bio-sketch
- Directions to the Krasnow Institute
- Past Potomac Chapter Grass Lecture
A few pictures from the 11/5 Grass Lecture:[1] In the Lecture Hall of the Krasnow Institute, Potomac Chapter's president Giorgio Ascoli introduces the 1999 Grass Fellowship awardee, Tomaso Poggio. Over 70 neuroscientists from the greater Washington DC area attended this colloquium.
[2] Dr. Poggio just before his talk....
[3] ... Dr. Poggio just after his talk.
[4] A bird-view of the refreshement in honor of Dr. Tomaso Poggio, in the "Great Room" of the Krasnow Institute.
[5] Informal discussions during the refreshment.
[6] Another moment of the 11/5/99 Potomac Chapter / Krasnow Institute reception for Grass Lecturer Tomaso Poggio.
"Brain and Machines: learning to see" Tomaso Poggio, 11/5/99. Abstract:
Learning is becoming the central problem in trying to understand intelligence and in trying to develop intelligent machines. I will outline some of our recent efforts in the domain of vision to develop machines that learn and to understand brain mechanisms of learning. I will describe systems that learn to recognize objects, in particular
faces, systems that learn to find specific objects in cluttered scenes and software that learns to draw cartoon characters from an artist's drawings and produce new images from a few real pictures. In particular, we have developed a trainable object detection architecture that succeeds in learning a sparse representation from an overcomplete set of Haar wavelets to perform difficult object detection tasks. In the area of neuroscience, we have developed a model that predicts several properties of IT neurons in monkey trained to recognize specific
objects.