Program

All times are provided in ET (eastern time zone)
(Room : Conference Room: P310, Level 3 / Pavillon Roger-Gaudry, Université de Montréal)

8:00-9:00 Registration + Coffee, tea & pastries 

Chairs: Karim Jerbi & Pierre L Bellec

9:00-9:15 Opening remarks - Brief address by Dr. Fréderic Bouchard (Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Université de Montréal), Dr. Jennie Z. Young, (Executive Director, Canadian Brain Research Strategy). 

9:15-10:00 Elizabeth DuPre (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada) - Aligning representations across individual models: Progress in naturalistic neuroimaging

10:00-10:30 Irina Rish (Université de Montréal & Mila, QC, Canada) - Rethinking Intelligence from Dynamical Systems Perspective

10:30-11:00 Talk 2 - Yoshua Bengio - (Université de Montréal & Mila, QC, Canada) - How can we teach humility to AI to make it safe?

11:00-11:15 break

11:15-12:00 (Keynote #1) -  Terry Sejnowski (UC San Diego, CA, USA) - State-space dynamics in cortex and transformers

12:00-12:45 Panel discussion: Does better AI mean more human-like AI?  / Panelists: Yoshua Bengio (Université de Montréal & Mila, QC, Canada) / Tegan Maharaj (HEC Montréal, QC, Canada) / Irina Rish (Université de Montréal & Mila, QC, Canada) / Paul Cisek (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada)

12:45 - Groupe picture 

12:45 -13:30 Lunch & Networking  (Hall d'honneur) 

13:30 - 14:30  Poster Session - (Hall d'honneur) 

Chairs: Paul Cisek & Eilif Muller 

14:30-15:00 Talk 3  - Patrick Desrosiers (Université Laval, QC, Canada) - Two new perspectives on the structure-function relationship in neural networks

15:00-15:30 Talk 4  - Paul Cisek (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada) - Some neuroscience foundations for AI

15:30-15:45 break 

15:45-16:30 (Keynote #2) - Luiz Pessoa (University of Maryland, MD, USA) - The entangled brain: integrating perception, cognition, and emotion

16:30-17:15 Lightning Talks 1 💫 (Organized by UNIQUE's Student Affairs Committee)

17:15-22:00 ✿ MAIN 2024 welcome reception (Hall d'honneur) / Brief welcome address by Dr. Yves Joanette (Deputy Vice-Rector, Research, Université de Montréal) and Dr. Virginie Portes (Director of Research Support, IVADO) Incl. refreshments & snacks + Posters, networking and fun 🧠🤖🎵✨ 

All times are provided in ET (eastern time zone)
(Room : Main Conference Room: P310, level 3)

8:00-9:00 Registration + Coffee, tea & pastries 

Chairs: Pierre L Bellec & TBA

9:00-9:15 Opening remarks - Special guests

9:15-10:00 Alessandro Gifford (Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany) - Experimentation on in silico neural responses from encoding models 

10:00-10:30 ʻŌiwi Parker Jones (Oxford University, Oxford, England) - Scaling-up speech BCIs

10:30-11:00 Taylor Webb (Microsoft Research, NYC, NY, USA) - The emergence of abstraction in minds and machines

11:00-11:15 break

11:15-12:00 (Keynote #3) - Doina Precup (McGill University & Mila, QC, Canada)  - On continual reinforcement learning

12:00-12:45 Panel discussion:  Emergence of reasoning in Brains and Machines / Panelists: Oiwi Parker Jones (Oxford University, Oxford, England) / Doina Precup (McGill University & Mila, QC, Canada) / Luiz Pessoa (University of Maryland, MD, USA) / Eva Portelance (HEC Montréal, QC, Canada) / Taylor Webb (Microsoft Research, NYC, NY, USA)

12:45 -14:00 Lunch & Networking +  Posters - (Hall d'honneur) 

Chairs: Shahab Bakhtiari & Federica Bencivenga

14:00-14:30 Madineh Sedigh-Sarvestani (Cornell University, NY, USA) - Comparative analysis of visual sensation and perception

14:30-15:00 Ian Charest (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada)  - Visual representations in the human brain predicted by large language models 

15:00-15:30 Maryam Vaziri (University of Delaware, DE, USA) - Visual Processing for Interacting with Objects and People

15:30-15:45 break 

15:45-16:30 (Keynote #4) - Carlos Ponce (Harvard Medical School, MA, USA) - On the relationship between single units and distributed representations

16:30-17:15 Lightning Talks 2 💫 (Organized by UNIQUE's Student Affairs Committee)

17:15-19:00 ✿ Posters, networking (Hall d'honneur)

All times are provided in ET (eastern time zone)
(Room : Main Conference Room: P310, level 3)

8:00-9:00 Registration + Coffee, tea & pastries 

Chair: Guillaume Lajoie

9:00-9:15 Opening remarks - Special guests

9:15-10:00 Patrick Mineault (Amaranth Foundation, QC, Canada) - Foundation models for neuroscience

10:00-10:30 Matthew Perich (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada) - A common neural basis for behavior across individuals and species 

10:30-11:00 Blake Richards (McGill University & Mila, QC, Canada) - Brain-like learning with exponentiated gradients

11:00-11:15 break

11:15-12:00 (Keynote #5) - Laura Driscoll (Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, WA, USA) - Fast and slow learning in artificial and biological networks

12:00-12:45 Panel discussion: Are foundation models for neuroscience the next big thing?  / Panelists: Laura Driscoll (Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, WA, USA), Eva Dyer (Georgia Institute of Technology, GA) / Smita Krishnaswamy (Yale University, CT, USA) / Patrick Mineault (Amaranth Foundation, QC, Canada) / Matthew Perich (Université de Montréal, QC, Canada) / Blake Richards (McGill University & Mila, QC, Canada)

12:45 - Groupe picture 

12:45 -14:00 Lunch & Networking +  Posters - (Hall d'honneur) 

Chairs: Matthew Perich

14:00-14:30 Alexander Meulmans (Google - Switzerland) - Multi-agent cooperation through learning-aware policy gradients

14:30-15:00 Kayvon Daie (Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, WA, USA) - Illuminating synaptic learning rules

15:00-15:30 Guillaume Lajoie (Université de Montréal & Mila, QC, Canada) - Credit assignment in neural networks without plasticity

15:30-15:45 break 

15:45-16:30 (Keynote #6) Eva Dyer (Georgia Institute of Technology, GA) - Large-scale pretraining on neural data allows for transfer across individuals, tasks and species

16:30-17:15 ✿ Prizes + Closing remarks + Brief closing address by Dr. Michelle Mckerrall (Director, Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal)

20:00 - Late   ✿ Neuro-AI Party Time @ Café SAT  🧠🤖🎵✨