News

Founding CTN member Philosopher Paul Thagard has a new book out: Dreams, Jokes and Songs: How Brains Build Consciousness.

The book provides:

• Clear and empirically supported explanation of consciousness as resulting from four brain  mechanisms.
• Application to a broad range of conscious experiences including smell, hunger, loneliness,  self-awareness, religious experience, sports performance, and romantic chemistry. 
• Use of these mechanisms to generate novel theories of dreaming, humor, and musical experience.
• Proposal of a new theory of time consciousness drawing on recent advances in neuroscience.
• Assessment of consciousness in non-human animals and machines, including the new generative  AI models such as ChatGPT. 
• Development of a new solution to the mind-body problem, called coherent materialism. 

And in a preview of coming attractions, stay tuned for his next book AI Boom or Doom?  Philosophy and Psychology of the New Artificial Intelligence, to be published soon by MIT Press

For more information you can follow this link to Paul´s blog.

Sarah An, Editoral Assistant at the Imprint recently reported on the CTN Brain Day 2025:

https://uwimprint.ca/brain-day-exploring-all-things-brain-through-an-interdisciplinary-lens/

Sue Ann Campbell is President Elect of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society. CAIMS represents applied and industrial mathematics in Canada. The society has become a significant presence in industrial, scientific, and technological circles within and outside of Canada.

Founding member of CTN, Professor emeritus of Philosophy, and 2013 Killam prize winner Paul Thagard has a new book out: Bots and Beasts: What makes Machines, Animals and People smart.

The conference was held in Guangzhou, China from November 14–18, 2017, and provided an international forum for scientists, researchers, educators, industrial professionals and students to present research results,

Congratulations to all members of the CNRG who had a paper accepted for CogSci this year! (hopefully I'm not missing anyone)

A small contingent of the CNRG presented their work at ICCM this year.

Peter Duggins gave a talk on the effects of drugs (Guanfacine and Phenylephrine) on a spiking neuron model of working memory. [Paper]

Research2Reality, a new social media and television campaign by six of Canada’s top research institutions — including the University of Waterloo — aims to bring high-impact university research to the living rooms and laptops of millions of Canadians.

The campaign, which will grow to include six public service announcements airing on the Discovery and Discovery Science channels, looks at the ways Canadian research impacts issues that matter deeply to Canadians, including health, technology, natural resources and sustainable energy.