Brain calls for papers / publications

Brain Awareness Video Contest

Convey a neuroscience concept on video

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) challenges you to produce an original video demonstrating a concept about the brain that could be used as a teaching tool or resource. Whether it's an animation, song, or hands-on classroom activity, share the wonders of science through the Brain Awareness Video Contest.

Questions? Contact BAW@SfN.org.

Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is an inspirational global campaign that unites those who share an interest in elevating public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain and nervous system research.

Prizes

Win up to $1,000 and a trip to SfN's annual meeting, Neuroscience 2012, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Top videos will be showcased at the meeting and will be featured online.

First Place — $1,000 Cash Prize, complimentary registration to Neuroscience 2012, two nights hotel, and economy air travel
Second Place — $500 Cash Prize
Third Place — $250 Cash Prize
People's Choice Award — $500 Cash Prize
Honorable Mention — Classroom Activity

Submit by June 11, 2012

How to Enter

Step 1: Make Your Video
Create a video up to five (5) minutes long.

Step 2: Upload Your Video to YouTube
If you don't already have one, create an account on YouTube.

Upload your video.

Tag your video as "Brain Awareness Video Contest"

Set your video's privacy settings to "Unlisted".

Disable comments on your video.
Copy the video URL and save it for Step 3.

Step 3: Submit Your Entry to SfN
After uploading your video to YouTube, you're ready to submit your entry to the Brain Awareness submission site. Click "Submit Your Video" and follow the instructions on the form.
Entries must be submitted by an SfN member.

Submissions must include:

The YouTube video URL
A digital copy of your video
Entrants are encourage to include a full transcript
Incomplete entries will not be eligible to win prizes in the Video Contest.

Eligibility

Anyone can participate, whether you are an educator, a student, or someone interested in the brain; however, videos must be submitted by a member of SfN. Don't know an SfN member? Use the Neuroscientist-Teacher Partner Program to connect with a neuroscientist near you. http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=neuroscientistTeacherPartners

All content must be less than five minutes, original, non-published, and non-grant-funded. Videos will be judged by neuroscience experts on scientific accuracy, creativity, and usefulness in an educational setting.

Call for Papers for a Special Section on the Topic of Dialogues With Neuroscience: Memory for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

September 17, 2012: abstract submission deadline

December 31, 2012: manuscript submission deadline

Neuroscience has long informed the psychology of memory. The paradigm example of this crosstalk is the discovery that damage to the hippocampus impairs long-term declarative memory but leaves other forms of learning and memory intact. This classic finding has motivated decades of research in cognitive neuroscience, inspired the multiple memory systems theory, and cemented the textbook distinction between declarative vs. non-declarative memory.

While this framework has been very fruitful in advancing an understanding of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system, neuroimaging studies of the intact human brain over the past decade have begun revealing a broader role for the hippocampus in many aspects of cognition beyond declarative memory, including reward, decision making, attention, perception, navigation, incidental learning, prediction, action, and working memory.

These new findings complicate our understanding of the function of the hippocampus and suggest that memory may be best understood in terms of the interactions between various cognitive processes. Thus, a current challenge is to develop an integrated framework that represents a broader view of the role of the hippocampus in guiding behavior, bridging psychological theory and neurobiological approaches.

To advance such a framework, we are soliciting contributions in this and related fields to a special section of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Details
Relevant areas of investigation span a range of psychological processes (including but not limited to those listed above) and methods (including behavioral, neuroimaging, and patient studies in humans, as well as animal studies).

Given this broad focus, all contributions should contain specific and identifiable insights into how the hippocampus and surrounding MTL cortex supports cognition, as well as clear implications for psychological theories, computational models, and/or behavior. These insights can arise from direct neuroscientific investigations, or from behavioral studies that connect known functions of the MTL with other processes (e.g., testing the role of relational memory in decision-making).

We are seeking submissions of cutting-edge empirical papers in short or long report format that provides a clear conceptual advance. Short reports (less than 3,000 words) could include a single experiment with straightforward methods, while long reports could include multiple experiments or complex analyses. We will also consider theoretical notes that provide a hypothesis or perspective on one issue, and longer theoretical papers that review recent work in a field or that present a new theory or model.

Although JEP: General has not traditionally published many neuroscientific studies, this call exemplifies a new priority of the journal to include neuroscience as one of several modern and important approaches for studying the mind. In exchange for publishing studies that might otherwise appear in general or specialized neuroscience journals, JEP: General will ensure that your work receives a broad audience, being ranked 4 of 81 among all psychology journals.

All submitted papers must meet the high quality standards of JEP: General, and thus will undergo the journal's regular review process. Every paper will be reviewed by experts in the relevant methods and topics in psychology and neuroscience, ensuring a fair and accurate evaluation. Reviewers will be blind to the fact that the papers were invited, and all papers will be subject to the possibility of rejection, with the editorial decisions made by the action editors of JEP: General.

It is important to emphasize that the journal believes that the issues dealt with in this special section are exciting and that these developments are highly promising. JEP: General is therefore committed to advancing and promoting this special section.

To indicate interest, please submit a tentative abstract by September 17, 2012. Based on these abstracts, the Organizers and Editors will select a number of papers to be submitted and reviewed. The planned timeline for the submission of papers is December 31, 2012. This abstract submission procedure is intended to ensure that the special section provides coherent and reasonable coverage.

We hope that this special section, bringing together a broad range of findings, will advance our understanding of both the cognitive processes that contribute to memory and the underlying neural processes by which memory systems influence behavior.

Questions about the special section can be addressed to the Special Section Organizers, Daphna Shohamy or Nick Turk-Browne.

Submit through the JEP: General Manuscript Submission Portal and please note that the submission is for this special section.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Cognitive Systems Research: Computational Models of Mindreading

Special issue editors: Paul Bello (paul.bello@navy.mil) & Marcello Guarini (mguarini@uwindsor.ca)

Mindreading, or the ability to represent and reason about the mental states of other agents and oneself, is a pervasive part of cognition that has yet to be deeply explored from a computational perspective. As a fundamental enabler for language understanding, plan recognition, cooperation, competition and moral cognition, it follows that detailed models of mental state attributions are a prerequisite for the development of a more complete theory of the human mind. Current cognitive theories of mindreading are predominantly philosophical in nature, with empirical work seemingly unable to provide definitive answers as to which framework might be the most defensible. Now that researchers have started to build cognitive models of mental-state reasoning, it is hoped that computational considerations may weigh in on the matter of how best to understand mindreading. This special issue seeks to promote interdisciplinary dialogue between computational cognitive modelers, philosophers, and psychologists studying the nature and operation of the human capacity to mindread. The emphasis of the issue will be placed on computational models and how they both inform and are informed by work in other disciplines.

Papers on mindreading are invited from AI, cognitive, social and developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy of psychology and other related disciplines.
A non-exclusive set of possible topics (among other possibilities) are:

• Computational representations of mental states
• Cognitive models of the attribution process, including attribution errors.
• Developmental models of mindreading, including both spontaneous elicitation and verbally presented mindreading tasks.
• Imagination as it relates to mindreading
• Introspection and its relationship to 3rd-person mental-state attribution
• Propositional attitude reports
• Philosophical foundations, including the theory/simulation debate and the debate over the domain-specificity of the human mindreading capacity.
• Computational/formal treatments of theory-driven, simulation-oriented, modular, hybrid, or other accounts of mindreading.
• Mental state reasoning in abduction and plan-recognition.
• Mindreading and moral, legal or other forms of normative cognition

Please submit papers electronically, in a PostScript or PDF form, by June 1st 2012, to the editors listed above.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience: Cognitive Training

Guest Editors: Daniel Pine & Yair Bar-Haim

Great excitement has emerged about the potential for neuroscience to enhances the lives of children. This excitement also is tinged with some level of concern about the vulnerable state of the immature brain. With the rapid changes in information technology and the range of media exposures available to children, particular interest has focused on the potential for media exposure to influence children. Research on cognitive training holds the hope of enhancing understandings in all of these areas. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience hopes to focus this interest through a Special Issue devoted to these themes.

Specifically, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience announces a forthcoming Special Issue focused on the interface among neuroscience, development, and cognitive training research. We are seeking papers focused on the use of cognitive modification techniques, designed to alter information-processing functions, focused specifically on developmental themes. The journal is interested in papers focused on the clinical utility of such techniques. Thus, studies in various developmental conditions would be of interest. This includes attention-related, learning, and emotional problems. Moreover, studies are sought that examine the manner in which cognitive training techniques influence measures of brain function, derived from imaging. Finally, the journal also is interested in studies focused on such techniques, applied to animal models. We anticipate receiving both empirical and review papers. We have particular interest in original research using experimental designs.

The deadline for receiving these papers is July 1, 2012, with a plan for publication in early 2013. To submit to the Special Issue visit http://ees.elsevier.com/dcn/ and select the Special Issue on Training when submitting your paper.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Translational Stroke Research: Endothelial Dysfunction in Cerebrovascular Disease

Guest editor: Nabil Alkayed (The Ohio State University)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: August 1, 2012

The cerebrovascular endothelium plays an important role in determining risk and outcome from cerebrovascular disease, including stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage and traumatic brain injury. The special issue will review novel mechanisms, methodology and therapeutic strategies targeting brain vascular endothelium.

Translational Stroke Research covers basic, translational, and clinical studies. The Journal emphasizes novel approaches in order to help translate scientific discoveries from basic stroke research into the development of new strategies for prevention, assessment, treatment, and repair after stroke and other forms of neurotrauma.

Translational Stroke Research focuses on translational research and is relevant to both basic scientists and physicians, including but not restricted to neuroscientists, vascular biologists, neurologists, neuroimagers, and neurosurgeons. The Journal provides an interactive forum for the dissemination of original research articles, review articles, research reports, letters, comments, and research protocols, in stroke and stroke related areas. Its distinguished editorial board is made up of leading stroke researchers and physicians from North America, Europe, and Asia.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Translational Stroke Research: the Peripheral Immune Response in Acute Injuries of the CNS

Guest editor: Keith Pennypacker (University of South Florida)

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: June 1, 2012

This issue will focus on the role that the peripheral immune system plays in delayed cellular death after injury to the CNS. Understanding these cellular and humeral responses will permit targeting specific signaling pathways for pharmaceutical intervention to reduce cellular degeneration without augmenting the post-injury immune suppression.

Translational Stroke Research covers basic, translational, and clinical studies. The Journal emphasizes novel approaches in order to help translate scientific discoveries from basic stroke research into the development of new strategies for prevention, assessment, treatment, and repair after stroke and other forms of neurotrauma.

Translational Stroke Research focuses on translational research and is relevant to both basic scientists and physicians, including but not restricted to neuroscientists, vascular biologists, neurologists, neuroimagers, and neurosurgeons. The Journal provides an interactive forum for the dissemination of original research articles, review articles, research reports, letters, comments, and research protocols, in stroke and stroke related areas. Its distinguished editorial board is made up of leading stroke researchers and physicians from North America, Europe, and Asia.