13th Symposium - 2022

Program

April 6th
20:00 - 21:15
Registration
21:15 - 22:00
Opening Session and Tribute to Fernando Lopes da Silva (in Portuguese)
22:00 - 22:45
Opening Conference

Chairman | Axel Cleeremans

Research Director, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Scientific interests: consciousness and implicit learning, models of conscious and unconscious cognition, neural network of cognitive processes.

The perception of time in humans, brains and machines

Anil Seth

Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, University of Sussex, and Founding Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, UK. Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Program in Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. Editor-in-Chief of the Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press) and Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow. Scientific interests: the understanding of the biological basis of consciousness by bringing together research across neuroscience, mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychology, philosophy and psychiatry.

PDF Presentation

Abstract

We have eyes to see, ears to hear, and noses to smell - but how do we perceive the flow of time? I will explore the perception of time from the perspective of the brain as a “prediction machine”, presenting a series of studies from our laboratory that have been led by Warrick Roseboom. In our view, brains do not mark off time by the ticking of an ‘internal clock’. Our perception of time is instead generated by brain mechanisms involved in perception of things other than time itself. I will illustrate this view with a combination of experiments, computational models, and brain imaging data - setting these studies in the broader context of predictive perception and the Bayesian brain. We will see how to build machines that perceive time in a human-like way, and how time itself is not just one thing but many things.