Title: Controlling control through mechanisms of leanring and memory Speaker: Dr. Jiefeng Jiang Chair: Prof. Tianzi Jiang, Brainnetome Center, CASIA  Time: 14:30-15:30, Jul. 4, 2019  Venue:  The 1rd meeting room, 3rd floor, Intelligence Building

 Abstract:

“Cognitive control” refers to a collection of neurocognitive mechanisms that align behavior with internal goals through top-down modulations on neural information processing, and hence plays a key role in adaptive behavior. Despite of its importance in adaptive behavior, cognitive control is costly, both in terms of consuming limited cognitive processing capacity and in terms of the opportunity cost of not dedicating that processing capacity to other cognitive functions. Ideally, the exertion of control should therefore be carefully titrated to achieve a desired goal while limiting potential costs. This gives rise to a central question in current cognitive psychology and neuroscience: how does the brain know how much cognitive control is needed? Recent theoretical advances provide a new perspective on the regulation of cognitive control based on expectations of cognitive control demand. This has sharpened the aforementioned question to ‘how does the brain learn and predict cognitive control demand, and adjust cognitive control accordingly?’ In this talk, I will present some of our recent work to address this question.

Biography:

Dr. Jiefeng Jiang obtained his Master's degree at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then pursued his Ph.D degree at Duke University. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology, Stanford University. Dr. Jiang's research focuses on using neuroimaging, computational modeling and behavioral testing to advance our understanding of how humans achieve complex goal-directed behavior.