Séminaires DPC GIPSA-lab, Site Ampère, salle B314

Jeudi 06 janvier 2011, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
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Alessandro Vinciarelli - Université de Glasgow, Department of Computing Science

Social Signal Processing: understanding nonverbal communication in social interactions

There are more than words in linguistic communication. Whenever involved in social interactions, people display a wide number of nonverbal behavioral cues (facial expressions, vocalizations, gestures, postures, etc.) that add entirely new layers of meaning to the words being uttered. Social Signal Processing is the new, emerging domain aimed at conceptual modeling, automatic analysis and machine synthesis of nonverbal cues used as social signals, i.e. signals conveying information about social actions, social relations, social emotions and social attitudes. The goal of this talk is to illustrate the general aspects of the domain, present some examples of SSP works, and show how SSP can be helpful to make computers more adept and robust to realistic socio-cultural phenomena.

Jeudi 13 janvier 2011, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
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Catherine Tallon-Baudry - UPMC (Paris)

The links between attention and awareness

Attention has long been considered to be the organizing function that brings relevant information to the forefront of our conscious mind. This in turn enables us to control our actions, according to our internal goals. Attention, awareness and control therefore appear to be tightly related: an attended stimulus reaches awareness, subsequently leading to a decision whether or not to act. In particular, neural amplification by attention is thought be a crucial factor for a stimulus to reach awareness. In this view, the typical enhancement of neural responses to attended stimuli would increase their effective contrast during visual processing and therefore facilitate conscious access. Surprisingly, this intuitively appealing assumption has never been directed tested. We performed a series of experiments in normal subjects as well as in blindsight patient GY in which we manipulated both attention and visual awareness, and repeatdely observed a double dissociation, at the neural level, between attention and awareness. Our results therefore point toward a double dissociation between attention and visual awareness at the neural level, a conclusion that calls for a revision of the respective definitions of these two major cognitive functions.

Jeudi 20 janvier 2011, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
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Fanny Meunier - DDL Université de Lyon 2
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Résumé à venir

Jeudi 27 janvier 2011, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
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Christophe d’Alessandro – LIMSI (UPMC et Paris Sud XI)
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