Info

About

The aim of this workshop is to stimulate advances in mathematical and cognitive neuroscience related to emergence. The event brings together practitioners in mathematics, computational and cognitive neurosciences, as well as pioneering figures in adjacent areas, in order to present their latest work on multi-scale methods and emergent phenomena, and to engage in lively discussions.

Confirmed speakers include Stuart Kauffman, Lenore Blum, Lai-Sang Young, Melanie Boly, Daniel Polani, Lionel Barnett, and others. See here for the full list of speakers and preliminary conference program. Also confirmed is a special contemplative interlude led by zen Buddhist monk Br. Phap Linh.

The workshop is the final installment in the Fields Institute 2025 Thematic Program in Mathematical Neuroscience, which has hosted a series of meetings, courses, visiting researchers, and facilitated collaborations in Toronto throughout the year.


Register and Visit

Registration is open!. Note that numbers are limited, so be sure to register early to guarantee a place. Attendance is free of charge.


Venue

Fields

Fields Institute Atrium

The venue for the workshop is Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Be sure to check out their past programming and support of mathematical neuroscience research + education, and also their excellent short summary video:

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The Fields building is located on the South-West corner of the picturesque University of Toronto St George campus, in the downtown heart of Canada’s largest and most vibrant city.

UofT

University of Toronto

Right next door to Fields is the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics (KCNI) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) College Street site, where several of the workshop’s co-organizers are based.

KCNI

CAMH KCNI


Organizing Committee

Maia Fraser

University of Ottawa

Nadav Amir

Princeton University / Fields Institute

John Griffiths

CAMH KCNI / University of Toronto


Partner Institutions and Sponsors


Fields Logo
UToronto Logo
CAMH Logo

Program

Speakers

Stuart Kauffman

Stuart Kauffman

University of Pennsylvania

Lenore Blum

Lenore Blum

Carnegie Mellon University

Lai-Sang Young

Lai-Sang Young

New York University

Daniel Polani

Daniel Polani

University of Hertefordshire

Lionel Barnett

Lionel Barnett

University of Sussex

Melanie Boly

Melanie Boly

University of Wisconsin

Chris Harris

Chris Harris

Backyard Brains

William Marshall

William Marshall

Brock University

Andrew Lee

Andrew Lee

University of Toronto

Noga Zaslavsky

Noga Zaslavsky

New York University

Chrystopher Nehaniv

Chrystopher Nehaniv

University of Waterloo

Phap Linh

Br. Phap Linh

Plum Village France



Program

(provisional, subject to change)

🗓️ Day 1 (Tues. Dec. 9th)

08:45 — ☕ Morning Coffee
09:00 — 🎤 Opening Remarks
09:15 — 🎓 Session 1
  • Keynote: Melanie Boly - Consciousness: From Theory to Practice
  • William Marshall - Integrated Information Across Spatiotemporal Grains
11:00 — ☕ Break
11:15 — 🎓 Session 2
  • Keynote: Lenore Blum (remote) - TBD
12:15 — 🍽️ Lunch
14:15 — 🎓 Session 3
  • Keynote: Lionel Barnett - Dynamical Independence: Identification and discovery of emergent macroscopic phenomena in complex neural systems
  • Andrew Lee - “The future of consciousness”
15:45 — ☕ Break
16:00 — 🎓 Panel Discussion
Melanie Boly, William Marshall, Lenore Blum, Lionel Barnett, Andrew Lee

🗓️ Day 2 (Wed. Dec. 10th)

08:45 — ☕ Morning Coffee
09:30 — 🎓 Session 4
  • Nadav Amir - Telic states: an information theoretic approach to state representation learning
  • Keynote: Daniel Polani - Organisation of the Information Flow in the Perception-Action Loop
11:00 — ☕ Break
11:15 — 🎓 Session 5
  • Keynote: Stuart Kauffman (remote) - The Indefinite: A Third Transition in Science
12:15 — 🍽️ Lunch
14:00 — 🎓 Session 6
  • Special session: Br. Phap Linh (remote) - the mathematics of interbeing—a meditation
  • Conversation between Stuart Kauffman and Br. Phap Linh
15:20 — ☕ Break
15:45 — 🎓 Session 7 and Panel Discussion
  • Chris Harris - Embodied neurorobotics
  • Panel Discussion: Daniel Polani, Noga Zaslavsky, Chris Harris

🗓️ Day 3 (Thurs. Dec. 11th)

08:45 — ☕ Morning Coffee
9:00 — 🎓 Session 8
  • John D. Griffiths - The curious case of the first eigenvector
  • Raphaël Lafond-Mercier - Neural heterogeneity enables adaptive encoding of time sequences
11:00 — ☕ Break
11:15 — 🎓 Session 9
  • Keynote: Lai-Sang Young (remote) - A multiscale approach to computing neuronal dynamics
12:15 — 🍽️ Lunch
13:15 — 🎓 Session 10 and Concluding Remarks
  • Chrystopher Nehaniv - Coarse-Graining Dynamics and the Emergence of Complexity in Evolved Intelligence
  • Hanna Derets - EEG microstate syntax analysis at multiple scales using epsilon-machines to differentiate meditators and non-meditators
  • Organizers/Panel - Concluding remarks

Register

Workshop Registration

The organizing committee and the Fields Institute are committed to facilitating access and minizing barriers to scientific education, training, exposure to cutting-edge research, and academic career development.

Attendance is therefore free of charge.

All planning to attend by zoom or in-person, please go to the Fields website event page to register. Due to space restrictions, there are a limited number of in-person places available.


Accommodation:

See here for a variety of discounted accommodation options within walking distance of the Fields Institute.