The following may help clarify the strategic position Spikenet has in Simon Thorpe who is the head of the TMBI and one of TBMI's labs CerCo
HISTORY OF THE TMBI
The Toulouse Mind & Brain Institute (TMBI) brings together a very wide range of researchers in the Toulouse area, all interested in aspects of Cognition and Behavior.
In French, the title is “Institut des Sciences du Cerveau, de la Cognition et du Comportement” (ISC3T).
The Institute dates back to 2000, when a group of 5 laboratoires joined together to form the ISCT (Institut des Sciences du Cerveau de Toulouse) under the direction of Professor Jean-Luc Nespoulous, a Neuropsycholinguist working at the Jacques-Lordat Laboratory at Université Toulouse Mirail (as it was then called).
It became the IFR96 (Institut Féderative de Recherche) and for many years was directed by Professor François Chollet from the INSERM Unit U825 and his Deputy Yves Trotter, a CNRS Research Director from the CerCo (Brain and Cognition Research Center).
The ISCT played a key role in the development of a major project to renovate the Pavillon Baudot, located on the Purpan Hospital site, and two major laboratories were able to move into the new premises in 2011.
In January 2016, the position of director was taken over by Simon Thorpe who is also the director of the CerCo, with Professor Jérémie Pariente from INSERM Tonic as deputy.
Two other Brain related initiatives have also just started in Toulouse at the start of 2016. First, there is an FHU (Fédération Hospitalo-Universitaire) called HoPeS that is building a consortium to work on Cognitive, Psychiatric and Sensory Handicaps. This structure, with a budget of roughly €100 K per year for three years, is being led by Jérémie Pariente and Professor Christophe Arbus.
Second, there is a new initiative in Neurodegenerative Disease called “NeuroToul” that is aimed at tackling three major health challenges – Parkson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, all areas where Toulouse has a strong research community.
In March 2016, we learned that the ANR (Agence National de Recherche) was launching a call for proposals for
“Instituts Convergences”, which will fund 5-10 major interdiscplinary research centres with a total budget of €30 million – enough to provide between 300 and 700 k€ per year for 10 years.
It was decided to use combine the forces of the ISC3T, HoPeS and NeuroToul to put together a highly interdisciplinary project under the banner of the Toulouse Mind & Brain Institute. It was this objective that led to the launch of this new website on the 23rd March 2016.
By pooling together the talent from 5 core laboratoires and several other partner labs and institutions, we hope to be able to put together an attractive project that could appeal to the International Review panel who will be evaluating the projects. The proposal, which needs to be written in English, has to be submitted before 11am on Thursday 21st April 2016.
We very much hope that all Toulouse based researchers interested in any aspect of Brain, Behavior and Cognition including the develoment of intelligent articial systems will be keen to join the project.
With best wishes
Simon Thorpe and Jérémie Pariente, on behalf of the scientific commitee of the TMBI.
http://tmbi.fr/history-of-the-tmbi/
Spikenet is recognised as one of two strong industrial partners of CerCo.
PERCEPTION, ATTENTION & ACTION PROJECTS
Nearly half TMBI members are interested in Perception, Attention & Action. There are strongly established lines of investigation on sensory perception and attention in many TMBI labs (CerCo, Octogone-Lordat, CLLE, TONIC, IRIT, ISAE, CRCA) and include research on nearly all sensory modalities (vision, audition, touch, olfaction, taste) as well as multi-sensory integration. With a diversity of species under study –from humans to non-human primates, from rodents to insects—experimental approaches are equally varied: experimental or descriptive psychology, eye-tracking, virtual reality, fMRI, EEG, TMS, electrophysiology, two-photon and calcium imaging, as well as genetic and pharmacological manipulations. This is before mentioning computational approaches in network modelling, computer vision and computational neuroscience.
Perception and action are intimately linked in daily life: perception and attention depend on active motor exploration, while nearly all motor acts involve sensory-motor coupling. A case in point is language, where speech perception and speech production are mutually dependent. Octogone-Lordat, CerCo, CLLE, and IRIT have ongoing interdisciplinary work on a wide array of linguistic research areas: perception of post-surgical (ENT cancer) pathological, motor-impaired speech; lower-level perception and higher-level cognitive processing of prosodic features involved in speech structuring (neuroimaging techniques) and modulated by attention processes; speech, prosodic and non-verbal imitation behaviors in multimodal interactional communication and second language learning.
The CerCo and CIC have strong ties to industrial partners like SpikeNET and Cochlear, that develop brain-inspired image processing systems and sensory aids. But TMBI will encourage even stronger links with AI & Computer Science. With the advent of deep learning, such collaborations will be increasingly bidirectional: not only can biology help provide engineering solutions for computer vision, artificial neural networks provide a reference model—and source of inspiration—for neuroscientific and psychological investigations.
The following projects are already funded
- ERC Consolidator P-Cycles (Rufin Van Rullen)
Brainchip, through it's subsidiary Spikenet and Simon Thorpe sits in the epicenter of neurological research and computer science in France. With Brainchip's license to have the exclusive rights to next generation neural network technology from CerCo, it heralds BRN presence on the global stage and cements us as a leading player in the next generation of AI development.
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