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Hei alle sammen! This is our *real* webpage. I have also created an FB page for advert purposes, but here is the place where we will post calls for our meetings, agenda, papers, opinions, comments, and everything else we like. Enjoy!

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Dear HBF-ers,

The Forum-of-consciousness people in Oslo will be hosting two online lectures today and tomorrow - here is the email messageThursday, February 17th at 19.00 and 20.00:     THE DREAMING BRAIN

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On Thursday the 17th of February, at 7pm and 8pm, The Forum For Consciousness Research together with the Conscious Brain Concepts consortium at UiO are hosting two events on dreaming (both on zoom), within the Oslo Life Science Conference 2022:

1)  19.00 - 20.00 (CET): Public lecture by Erik Hoel, PhD, Research Assistant Professor at Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA.

"The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis: Dreaming As Data Augmentation"

2)  20.10 - 22.00 (CET): Short presentations and panel discussion on the nature and mechanisms of dreams and why we have them.
Panelists:
- Erik Hoel, PhD, Research assistant professor at Tufts University, Massachussets, USA
- Brigitte Holzinger, PhD, lecturer at Vienna University, and co-founder of Austrian Sleep Research Association, Austria
- Caroline Horton, PhD,  Reader in Psychology and Director of DrEAMSLab, Bishop Grosseteste University, U.K.
- Johan F. Storm, MD, PhD, professor in neurophysiology, University of Oslo, Norway

This is part of the Oslo Life Science Conference 11-17 February 2022 http://uio.no/oslolifescience

Both events are online. To receive a link to the webinar, please register here:
<https://nettskjema.no/a/242402#/page/1> (event 1), and:
<https://nettskjema.no/a/242173#/page/1> (event 2).
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In the future, we will move this email list to another server. To ensure that you will receive future updates regarding events organized by The Forum For Consciousness Research, please visit the following link to subscribe. Note that you will receive a confirmation email after subscribing.
https://sympa.uio.no/medisin.uio.no/subscribe/forum-for-consciousness-research
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The Zoom link for the panel discussion, titled "What Are Dreams And Why Do We Have Them?", is:
https://uio.zoom.us/j/64362129264 <https://uio.zoom.us/j/64362129264?fbclid=IwAR2RvXvNdfoktttRKS_w-UCjvitUPttOW4Ex2UwQ5nZazaae2Vxt_17jwUA>

The Zoom link for the public lecture by Erik Hoel, titled "The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis: Dreaming As Data Augmentation", is: https://uio.zoom.us/j/67125725432 <https://uio.zoom.us/j/67125725432 fbclid=IwAR0lg64OLTYTvNV6X4tzhWMbz3zVoxa9Xs5wy68iDcLDVmoAOV77AhmecxA>

Please forward these links if you know of anyone who might be interested in participating.
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Erik Hoel is an American neuroscientist, neurophilosopher, and fiction writer. His main areas of research are the study and philosophy of consciousness, cognition, biological function of dreams, and mathematical theories of emergence. He is noted for using information theory and causal analysis to develop mathematical models to explore and understand the basis of consciousness and dreams. Hoel holds a PhD degree in Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is recipient of Forbes 30 Under 30 – Science. He is currently working as a research assistant professor at Tufts University.

Here is a summary of Hoel's Overfitted Brain Hypothesis of dreaming:
"Dreaming remains a mystery to neuroscience. While various hypotheses of why brains evolved nightly dreaming have been put forward, many of these are contradicted by the sparse, hallucinatory, and narrative nature of dreams, a nature that seems to lack any particular function. Recently, research on artificial neural networks has shown that during learning, such networks face a ubiquitous problem: that of overfitting to a particular dataset, which leads to failures in generalization and therefore performance on novel datasets. Notably, the techniques that researchers employ to rescue overfitted artificial neural networks generally involve sampling from an out-of-distribution or randomized dataset. The overfitted brain hypothesis is that the brains of organisms similarly face the challenge of fitting too well to their daily distribution of stimuli, causing overfitting and poor generalization. By hallucinating out-of-distribution sensory stimulation every night, the brain is able to rescue the generalizability of its perceptual and cognitive abilities and increase task performance." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S108707921830162X

Links:
http://uio.no/oslolifescience/
https://bevissthetsforum.no/
https://bevissthetsforum.no/event/erik-hoel-public-lecture-the-overfitted-brain-hypothesis-dreaming-as-data-augmentation/
https://www.uio.no/english/research/strategic-research-areas/life-science/research/convergence-environments/consciousbrainconcepts/, https://www.uio.no/english/research/strategic-research-areas/life-science/oslo-life-science-conference/
https://www.facebook.com/Bevissthetsforum/

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I'm trying to write something fantastic (that's what the padlet wants :-) Here it is: tomorrow we meet at 15.00 (Borgaskaret, Alrek), and will have the pleasure to listen to Franz Knappik's presentation. All welcome!

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Hello everyone,

Please remember that Kjersti's montage 'Magnetic Sleep' is still ON at the Rogaland Kunstsenter. Here is the snapshot she discussed on our latest meeting:

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Dear all, thanks for very inspiring comments yesterday! Here I upload my powerpoint. Take care, Franz

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GitHub - arvidl/consciousness-explore: Explorations of the concept of consciousness, self-awareness, and consciousness in brain and machine

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GitHub - arvidl/consciousness-explore: Explorations of the concept of consciousness, self-awareness, and consciousness in brain and machine

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Explorations of the concept of consciousness, self-awareness, and consciousness in brain and machine Initiated: February 1, 2022 (Last updated: 20220301) Naive credo: (i) Make phenomena (e.g. `consciousness'), processes and values a conscious experience ("bevisstgjøre prosesser"); (ii) Representation learning, attention and relationships. [Inspired by Gallileo's Error, The Conscious Prior, and ...

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These are the slides for the talk from 21 April 2022. A couple of slides and text have been added.

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... and some photos from yesterday - Enjoy!

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... and some photos from yesterday - Enjoy!

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Theories of Consciousness, Nat Rev Neurosci, May 2022

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David Chalmers - Could AI Systems be Conscious?

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David Chalmers - Could AI Systems be Conscious?

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Listen now | An interview with David Chalmers, renowned philosopher of mind and professor at NYU.

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SYN (the vision) presents the results of the artistic projects that constitutes Synsmaskinen and its ongoing research.

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SYNSMASKINEN is an artist-conglomerate and an inquiry into contemporary political crises. The project consists of a series of art projects, each exploring a certain aspect or manifestation of contemporary crisis. Together these visions are attempts to unfold a contemporary cosmology; a new political horizon.

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The Living Unliving Surveillance Poet:
www.areyouready.tv

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The 23rd CHAIN seminar

Time:
9 am-10:30 am Friday 24, June 2022 (Japan Standard Time)

Zoom registration:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEpf-6qpjojGNeQDTfZ1Y9YNAc17bYgJLYq

Speaker:
Prof Masataka Watanabe (Univ Tokyo)

Title:
Solving the Hard Problem and Closing the Explanatory Gap with Natural Laws of Consciousness
- Towards a Scientific Investigation of Consciousness and Mind-Uploading -

Abstract:
Natural laws, such as the principle of the constancy of light velocity, are vital to science. If we trace any scientific theory back to its origins, we will end up with these natural laws. If that is the case, we should take it for granted that the science of consciousness requires one too. The science of consciousness is our very first attempt to bind the objective with the subjective; the objective is what can be observed when we insert a recording electrode, while the subjective comes in the form of subjective experience and poses the question of what a neural network is experiencing in the first person. As soon as we acknowledge its necessity, both the explanatory gap and the hard problem vanish into thin air; the natural law is what closes the gap and nullifies the difficulty of the problem.

I explain the above argument and further propose an experimental approach to validate such laws of nature, which, as a byproduct, results in a viable method for mind uploading. The key to the approach is a totally new type of BMI that enables reading and writing information with unprecedented precision.

References:
Masataka Watanabe, “From Biological to Artificial Consciousness”, Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91138-6

Masataka Watanabe, Kang Cheng, Yusuke Murayama, Kenichi Ueno, Takeshi Asamizuya, Keiji Tanaka, Nikos Logothetis. Attention But Not Awareness Modulates the BOLD Signal in the Human V1 During Binocular Suppression. SCIENCE. 334. 6057. 829-831. 2011
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1203161

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We all thank you, Mark, for a very inspiring talk!

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Mark_Price_Slides for Consciousness talk Nov 2022

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Representation learning and Consciousness with a view to generative AI Arvid Lundervold, BSc, MD, PhD https://github.com/arvidl/consciousness-explore/HBF_20230223 Presentation at the HBF* meeting , Thursday February 23, 2023, 3-4 pm HBF * HBF is University of Bergen's research interest group on b...