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  • May
    12

    Appl Math: Adrienne Fairhall on "In Search of Internal Mental Models" - Reiss Lecture

    McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

    4:00 PM Hive Room 2350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center

    EVENT DETAILS

    Title: In Search of Internal Mental Models - Reiss Lecture

    Speaker: Adrienne Fairhall, University of Washington

    Abstract: How do we build the mental models that we use to perceive, navigate and reason about the world? How might these models be inferred from neural activity? I will describe experiments and analysis in collaboration with Beth Buffalo's lab to explore these questions in our closest relatives, nonhuman primates. In one example, we compare monkey and human behavior in a decision task, and analyze how subjects make use of visual information and feedback to infer a hidden rule, where the rule switches in an uncued fashion. We fit a suite of behavioral models and learn that while humans are close to optimal Bayesian agents, monkey behavior is better fit as reinforcement learning. This allows us to seek neural implementations of this internal belief update. Further, while rodent hippocampus famously encodes the animal's spatial location, we find evidence that hippocampus in the primate serves a more cognitive role.

    Zoom: TBA

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    TIME Monday, May 12, 2025 at 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

    LOCATION Hive Room 2350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center    map it

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    CONTACT Ted Shaeffer    ted.shaeffer@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR McCormick-Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics (ESAM)

  • Jun
    15

    2024-2025 Commencement Ceremony

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILSmore info

    TIME Sunday, June 15, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar

  • Jun
    16

    Northwestern Engineering PhD Hooding and Master's Degree Recognition Ceremony

    McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

    9:00 AM 2705 Ashland Ave

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, June 16, 2025 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

    LOCATION 2705 Ashland Ave   

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    CONTACT Northwestern Engineering Events    northwestern-engineering-events@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  • Jun
    16

    Northwestern Engineering Undergraduate Convocation

    McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

    2:00 PM 2705 Ashland Ave

    EVENT DETAILSmore info

    TIME Monday, June 16, 2025 at 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

    LOCATION 2705 Ashland Ave   

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    CONTACT Northwestern Engineering Events    northwestern-engineering-events@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

  • Jun
    23

    Summer classes begin

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Monday, June 23, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar

  • Sep
    16

    Fall 2025 Classes Begin

    University Academic Calendar

    All Day

    EVENT DETAILS

    TIME Tuesday, September 16, 2025

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    CONTACT Office of the Registrar    nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL

    CALENDAR University Academic Calendar