Brain and Cognitive Sciences

It's May 1, the admissions to our programme have closed. We received 274 applications, which is a lot for a small-scale programme. Really happy to see so much interest in interdisciplinary research into cognition and neuroscience!

Not one, not two, but three of our students (and one graduate) worked on this article! Congrats to all authors! 🎈

Bartnik, C. G., Sartzetaki, C., Puigseslloses Sanchez, A., Molenkamp, E., Bommer, S., Vukšić, N., & Groen, I. I. A. (2025). Representation of locomotive action affordances in human behavior, brains and deep neural networks. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.15.594298

Our admissions process is running like the machine it's supposed to be, and we are seeing fantastic applicants. There's still room left, though: if you are interested in an interdisciplinary master's programme on neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience or cognitive science, check out:

https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/research-masters/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/study-programme/study-programme.html

UvA scientists outsource expensive and boring tasks to AI – how responsible is that? - Folia
https://www.folia.nl/en/actueel/165019/uva-scientists-outsource-expensive-and-boring-tasks-to-ai-how-responsible-is-that

We're happy to share that our graduate Violeta Céspedes Izquierdo was one of the winners of the Faculty of Science Thesis Prize at @uva_amsterdam@akademienl.social

https://medewerker.uva.nl/en/science/content-secured/news/2024/10/winners-faculty-masters-thesis-prize-announced.html

HAVA is an interdisciplinary PhD programme seeking to align video AI with ethical standards, with Anne Zonneveld, one of our graduates investigating video AI as compared to human visual perception. See here for more on the institute:

https://dsc.uva.nl/content/news/2024/10/hava-lab-officially-opened-meet-the-phd-candidates-of-this-lab.html?origin=mnbnUcF6TSuNo1CsIh3QcA

Ones to watch: young neuroscientists on the rise
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03049-2

We recently celebrated our 20 year anniversary. See here for a brief report on the day!

https://iis.uva.nl/en/content/news/2024/04/20-years-of-pushing-boundaries-with-the-msc-brain-and-cognitive-sciences.html

It's almost there again: the annual Cognitalks, organised by Cognito Student Union. If you're in the Amsterdam area on April 9, feel free to join for a night of cutting-edge work from neurobiology, psychology and cognitive neuroscience!

Great interview with MBCS alumna Katharina Wilmes, on the neuronal substrates of learning

https://www.caim.unibe.ch/about_us/people/interviews/katharina_wilmes/index_eng.html

We're happy to announce the upcoming Summer School on Neuro-AI. From 17 - 27 June, we will take an interdisciplinary deep-dive into the crosstalk between neuroscience, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, with a great line-up of speakers. See www.neuro-ai.eu for more information!

Decades-long bet on consciousness ends — and it’s philosopher 1, neuroscientist 0
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02120-8

How to cite ChatGPT (if you really need to):

https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt

On June 29, the annual ABC symposium takes place in Amsterdam. The topic is transience versus persistence in emotional memories and the event features Stephen Maren, Aline Desmedt, Nikolai Axmacher, Jay Gottfried, Merel Kindt and Emily Holmes.

For registration, see: https://www.abcsymposium.nl/?page_id=30