An open lecture given by Joe MacInnes was published online

The head of the laboratory, Joe MacInnes, gave an open lecture on "Reverse engineering the human brain" within the series of lectures of the HSE program "Cognitive sciences and technologies"  and the cultural and educational center Arche.

The lecture was held within the framework of the lectures of the HSE program “Cognitive sciences and technologies: from neuron to cognition” of the Department of Psychology of the National Research University Higher School of Economics and the Center for Archae on April 17, 2019. Lecturer: William Joseph McInnes - Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Head of the Laboratory for Modeling Visual Perception and Attention. The lecture was devoted to the topic "Reverse engineering the human brain".
Computational models in psychology and neuroscience share many algorithms with machine learning, machine vision and artificial intelligence, but the focus of the research is different. Where applied fields try to create algorithms that solve or automate a specific problem, computational modelling uses these algorithms to better understand fundamental workings of human brain and cognition. Rather than optimizing a new process, we try to simulate and understand an existing process. While computational modelling is still a growing field, there have emerged a number of contenders that perform very well in simulating various neural and cognitive processes. Diffusion models of decision making, salience models of vision and more recently deep learning models of object classification have all shown promise on their respective tasks. This talk will give an overview of how we create computer models and simulations to decipher human cognition.