EVENTS

Contents

• School Research Seminar Series 2011-2012
• International Neuroscience Meeting
• EEG Workshops
• AICS 2010
  
• Previous School Research Seminars
  
• Fechner Day

School Research Seminar Series

The School of Psychology's Research seminar series highlights new and interesting research in psychology and related areas.  As you will see from the schedule of talks below, psychology is relevant to a range of questions about how people live their lives.  Some of these questions concern deep, philosophical issues and others address more practical issues of relevance to our daily lives.  We aim to bring the best international researchers to Galway to enrich our students' experience of psychology and to enliven our research programmes.  We also use these seminars to learn best how to service our local community here in Galway through the latest psychological advances.

When?
Fridays of Semesters 1 & 2, 1400 - 1500.

Who attends?
In the main, staff and students in the School of Psychology attend these talks.  Staff and students from cognate disciplines and interested parties from the local community also attend from time to time, depending on the topic.

Where?
Lecture Hall 3 in St Anthony’s Building, North Campus, NUI Galway.

Series co-ordinator
Dr. Denis O'Hora, ext. 5126.

Seminar Schedule Semester 1 2011/2012

International Neuroscience Meeting

From April 29 - May 1st, 2011, NUI Galway will host a prestigious international ESF/HRB funded neuroscience meeting entitled “Combining Human Brain Imaging Techniques”. Check our News section for more details. Registration and other details are available here: www.erni-hsf.eu

EEG Workshops

In March, the School of Psychology will host two workshops on the analysis of EEG.  The workshops will be lead by international experts.

Title: EEG signal processing

Date, time: 11th of March, 9am to 12 noon
Location: Cois Abhann Computer laboratory, School of Psychology, NUI Galway.
Expert: Dr. Walter Gruber, University of Salzburg, Austria
Dr. Gruber will review concepts in eeg-signal processing (e.g., filtering, Fourier transform and wavelet filtering) and guide participants through a number of potential analyses of eeg data.
What do i need to know? Basic knowledge of eeg (essential), experience using matlab will be useful to work through examples (desirable)

Title: Recurrence Quantification Analysis:  A nonlinear method of eeg analysis

Date, time: 25th of March, 9am to 12 noon
Location: Cois Abhann Computer laboratory, School of Psychology, NUI Galway.
Expert: Dr. Stefan Schinkel, Humboldt University of Berlin.
Dr. Schinkel will review Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) and demonstrate how to employ this method to analyse eeg data.
What do i need to know? Basic knowledge of eeg (essential), understanding of nonlinear methods (desirable), experience using matlab will be useful to work through examples (desirable)

If you are interested in attending these workshops, please contact Dr. Denis O'Hora in the School of Psychology.

AICS 2010

The 21st National conference on Artifical Intelligence and Cognitive Science will take place in NUI Galway from the 30th of August to the 1st of September, 2010. The conference is one of the foremost networking events in the calendar for researchers in business and academia to exchange views on computing that informs and is informed by psychology. Highlights this year include keynotes by J. A. Scott Kelso, leading researcher in brain and behaviour dynamics, and Ulrik Brandes, an expert in information visualisation. For more information, see the dedicated website at aics.nuigalway.ie.

Previous School Research Seminars

Dr. Denis O'Hora, ext. 5126, e-mail.

Seminar Schedule Semester 2 2010/2011

Seminar Schedule Semester 1 2010/2011

Seminar Schedule Semester 2 09/10

Seminar Schedule Semester 1 09/10

Fechner Day

Fechner day 2009, 25th (Centenary) meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics

In the early morning of October 22nd 1850, in his home in Leipzig, Germany, Gustav-Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), physicist and mystic, obsessed with establishing the relationship between mind and matter had an inspiration. He awoke from a troubled sleep that morning with the firm conviction in mind that the relationship between bodily and conscious facts, while not mutually reducible can be reduced to a single linking quantum, in this case the exact mathematical relation between them. Fechner intuited this relationship to be logarithmic and in so doing initiated an entire discipline dedicated to the scientific study of psychological phenomena.

The International Society for Psychophysics

The legacy of G.-T. Fechner persists in a modern form in the International Society for Psychophysics (ISP). Conceived of in 1982 with the first scientific meeting, the first Fechner Day held in 1985, the original members of the ISP originated to a very large extent in the former Harvard laboratory of the eminent modern psychophysicist S.S. Stevens, and his Swedish contemporary Gösta Ekman. The original members of the ISP, as with subsequent members, share a professional lineage that traces itself to Fechner’s successor, the first experimental psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt who was Chair of Psychology in Leipzig from 1879. Members of the ISP also share a spiritual/philosophical inspiration in the pioneer approaches of Fechner. Members of the ISP, past and present, include a number of significant figures in psychological science in the later half of the 20th century, including the architects of the cognitive revolution in psychological science of the early 1960’s; authors of the handbooks (and progenitors of the discipline) of mathematical psychology; developers of the Borg scales used in most contemporary pain management and many modern psychometric tests. The ISP is an international organization with members across the globe.

Since 1985 the ISP has met annually to discuss scientific business, promote good practice in psychological science and to promote and provide a means of exposure for graduate students and for scientists from less advantaged regions. Typically, meetings are between 80 – 120 delegates drawn from a standing (but informal) membership of some 250 scholars. The ISP is non hierarchical and is proud to maintain a linear but horizontal and famously informal sense of collegiality. This it owes perhaps to its Harvard roots. It is common at meetings to find a relaxed and congenial style suiting the mixing of students with some of the most influential people in the recent history of psychological science. Scientific content is subject to limited restriction in so far as if it is a measure and if it relates to human performance in one way or another it is acceptable. In my personal experience it is one of the only truly open forums for scientific exchange.

The ISP is non profit and entirely self supporting. It has no income other than annual membership dues while the Fechner Day, as a general rule, runs itself on the strength of registration fees. Some details of the organization may be found under www.ispsychophysics.org.

Fechner Day 2009

Fechner Day 2009 (the 25th Annual or Centenary Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics will be held at the Glenlo Abbey Hotel, Galway between 21st and 24th October 2009 (see www.fechnerday.com). Traditionally it is held on the anniversary of Fechner’s intuition which brought about modern psychological science. The meeting will begin with its opening reception on Wednesday evening, October 21st and continue to early Saturday evening, October 24th. It is the first meeting to be held in Ireland and the first meeting of its type to be associated with NUI Galway.

Around 120 delegates are anticipated as Ireland is a desirable destination, especially for the North American, Japanese and German visitors. Around 25% (so approximately 25) delegates are expected to be graduate students. Topics under discussion will include any and all of the following

Visit www.fechnerday.com and www.ispsychopysics.com for details. Fechner Day 2009 is supported financially by the NUI Galway Millennium fund, The Social Sciences Research Centre at NUI Galway, The School of Psychology at NUI Galway and the American Psychological Association, alongside numerous member donations.

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility