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Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS) was established in year 2002 as an initiative of the University Grants Commission (India) and was set us as a Centre of Excellence. It is an academic and research centre of University of Allahabad. CBCS was formally inaugurated on 2 February 2003 by the then Hon'ble Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The Master program in Cognitive Science was started in 2002. Main Research Areas are: * Perception, Attention & Consciousness * Affect & Cognition * Decision Making * Language Development * Online Language processing * Cognitive Disorders * Learning & Memory The broad goals of the Centre are to promote teaching and research in Cognitive Science and to popularize Cognitive Science as well. CBCS currently runs a Master program and a doctoral program in Cognitive Science. About CBCS-- The academic programmes of CBCS consist of Doctoral and Masters Programs in Cognitive Science. Under the "University Grants Commission Scheme" of Universities with Potential for Excellence, the University of Allahabad was selected for developing Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences as an Island of Excellence. The Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS) was set up to become that ‘Island of Excellence". CBCS has been in contact with other organizations and has taken a number of steps to popularize Cognitive Science to facilitate interactions with other scientists interested in the study of cognitive and behavioural problems as well as applications of findings from such studies. CBCS is making serious efforts to explore new inter-disciplinary interfaces (with computer science, neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and social sciences disciplines) and consolidate those that already exist. To pursue research activities and training in different areas of cognitive science, the Centre has seven different labs: Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Neuroinformatics and Intelligent Computing Lab ,Visual Cognition Lab, Language cognition lab, Bio-feedback lab, Virtual Reality lab and Neuropsychology & Rehabilitation Lab. For details see research and publications A number of achievements by the people at CBCS make the centre special. See faculty achievements and student achievements CBCS was formally inaugurated on 2 February 2003 by the then Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Read the message from the Founder and see where the alumni have moved on beyond CBCS. CBCS conducts research related in various areas of behavioural and cognitive sciences and also initiates outreach activities. See Outreach Programmes MSc programme Introduction to the MSc programme The Centre currently offers a Master program (M.Sc.) in Cognitive Science, the first such course in the field of Cognitive Science in India. The master program was launched in 2002. The goal of the teaching program is to help to develop a richer appreciation of the mental processes as well as laws and principles that govern them. The focus is on mental processes including consciousness, perception, attention, knowledge acquisition, memory, decision making, reasoning, emotions, actions, creativity and several other aspects of the mind studied through methodologies encompassing psychology, neuroscience and computer science. There is a strong emphasis on research projects and exposure to various theoretical and experimental studies in Cognitive Science. Course work is interdisciplinary with courses spanning Cognitive Psychology, Neuroscience, Computational Modelling, Linguistics, and Philosophy. The Centre and the University provide an ideal environment for study and research in Cognitive Science. Fees and financial aid Fees payable: As per University of Allahabad rules. Currently the University fees payable is around 2500 INR / year only (for Indian Students) making it a very financially affordable program in addition to its quality. Financial Assistantship : 3,000 INR/month will be provided as merit fellowships to Masters’ students by the Centre based on performance in the Masters Program. Course structure The Centre offers a Master (M.Sc.) Program in Cognitive Science of four semesters duration. The credits shall be earned by course-work as well as by completing the Master’s Thesis. The courses in semesters comprise Core (compulsory) and Elective (optional) courses. A large number of elective courses are available and the student would have considerable flexibility in choosing the electives. Students may opt for electives in consultation with the Course Advisory Committee (CAC). Students are required to be involved in research work as part of their Master thesis spanning two semesters. They are encouraged to write research papers for publication, and to make presentation in seminars and conferences. The research/thesis work shall culminate in a Dissertation to be submitted at the end of the fourth semester. A course may be divided into modular units and co-taught by two or more experts. I Semester Mathematical Methods for Cognitive Science Introduction to Cognition Principles of Neuroscience Research Methods Introduction to Programming and algorithms II Semester Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology Computational Models of Cognition Perception Psycholinguistics Decision Making III Semester Culture and Cognition Elective 1 Elective 2 Thesis IV Semester Philosophy of Mind Elective 3 Elective 4 Thesis List of Electives Attention Emotions Actions Creativity Consciousness Cognitive Development Social Cognition Neuropsychological Testing Cognitive Disorders Advanced Statistics Multivariate Analysis Psychometrics Speech Perception and Production Language and Cognition Reading Neurolinguistics Cognitive Linguistics Cognitive Robotics Multisensory Integration Computational Neuroscience Computational Vision Computational Linguistics Connectionist Modelling Dynamical Cognitive Science Brain Imaging Pattern Recognition Advanced Signal Processing Usability Testing Brain Computer Interfaces Special Topic in Cognitive Science PhD programme The Ph.D./D.Phil. (Doctoral) Program in various domains of Cognitive Sciences consists of course-work, literature review, presentations at seminars and thesis work. Students who have completed a Master’s program in Cognitive/Behavioural Sciences or related disciplines including Psychology, Neuroscience, Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Philosophy etc are eligible to apply for admission to the Doctoral Program. An entrance exam and interview will be conducted for selecting students to the D.Phil. Program. Students with NET/JRF/CSIR/GATE/ICMR are encouraged to apply for admission to the D.Phil. Program. Admission will be based on student’s performance at the postgraduate level, their aptitude in Cognitive Science, their performance in research as evidenced in their Master thesis or Project as well as their publications, and performance in the entrance exam and interview. For more information on D.Phil. admission process, please see PhD admissions. Financial support Fellowships are given to D.Phil. students based on merit. Research progress A Research Progress Committee (RPC) will be constituted for each research scholar to look after the planning and administration of the program. The Committee will consist of the supervisor and two other members of the faculty. The supervisor will act as the convenor of the Committee. The Committee will advise the student at all stages of his/her research and evaluate the progress. It will also make recommendations regarding the extension or termination of the scholar from the Program. Students will be required to do Course Work designed by the RPC. The students are required to take 4 core courses in the first semester followed by optional elective courses in the subsequent semesters. The student may take doctoral courses offered by the other departments at the University. The RPC may recommend remedial courses in Cognitive Science or related disciplines as needed. All students enrolled in a course will be evaluated by the course instructor. Evaluation will be based on Course Assignments, participation in class discussions and performance in written examination conducted by the course instructor. Students have to pass a comprehensive exam after completing the minimum course work in first semester satisfactorily. After passing the comprehensive exam, they will be required to submit a research proposal including a review of relevant literature. The proposal should be submitted not earlier than 6 months and not later than 12 months after getting admitted to the Doctoral Program. Research areas Perception, Attention, and Consciousness The research on perception and attention focuses on change detection, temporal dynamics of attention, attention & awareness, meditation. Change detection has been studied with color, shape, illumination, real scenes, hierarchical stimuli and motion. Research on temporal dynamics of attention has focused on the role of object-based information. Research on perceptual organization has focused on figure-ground organization. Studies based on structure from motion with different color backgrounds and foregrounds support theories of figure-ground organization that stress interaction between visual pathways. We are also exploring the link between attention and awareness. Studies with color afterimages show that types of attention do matter for awareness. We have also investigated differences between focused and distributed attention using neural measures, mainly CDA that is dependent on control of access to working memory. We have also performed studies on meditation. An initial study was performed with sudharshan kriya yoga (SKY), which has shown enhanced preattentive processes as indexed by larger mismatch negativity amplitudes. We have also investigated changes in attentional processes with meditation practice with children who meditate and results show improved alerting and conflict effects with experience using the Attentional Network Task. We have developed a model of attention, consciousness and meditation based on the concept of adaptive workspace and currently simulations based on the model are in progress. Affect and Cognition Most of the studies have focused on the interaction between attention and emotion. Studies have used many paradigms including visual search, load, dwell time, hierarchical stimulus processing. Attentional dwell time studies with different emotions have shown an advantage for happy faces at short SOAs (less than 200 ms). Emotional face recognition memory presented at the background as participants performed a letter task (low load or high load) found better performance with happy faces than sad faces. Sad faces interfered with the letter task more than happy faces especially with the high load task. Happy faces are linked to global processing and sad faces to local processing. These results are interpreted with a theoretical position emphasizing the link between happy face and distributed attention and sad face and focused attention. Studies have also shown that spatial frequency processing plays a critical role in identification of sad and happy faces. We have also found laterality effects in the identification of emotions interacting with spatial frequency information. Attentional capture (measured by inhibition of return) is affected by emotional information, hemispheric asymmetries and the nature of attention (object-based vs space-based). Language processing The overall goal of our research aims at exploring behavioural and neural aspects of language processing in its various manifestations. In our studies on probabilistic and incremental nature of spoken sentence processing, we are interested in how certain grammatical units trigger attention shifts that indicate subtle aspects of sentence processing. We are exploring the competition between semantic vs phonological and other conceptual information in providing cues for lexical access in a probabilistic manner. We are exploring the nature of visual attention during conceptualizing and planning states of sentence production. We are investigating the effect of literacy on spoken word/sentence processing as well as speed of lexical retrieval. In this connection, we are carrying out eye tracking experiments with illiterates and semi illiterates. Our studies on bilingualism and cognitive control focus on language switching in Hindi-English bilinguals and role of language proficiency in cognitive control in bilinguals. Cognitive advantage in bilingualism could be a language specific mechanism and may or may not transfer as a general cognitive advantage. Cognitive Development We have been working on typical and atypical development of brain and cognition. We have reported detrimental effects of stunting due to chronic protein energy malnutrition on the development of cognitive functions in children. We have also found nonlinear, heterogeneous nature of development of cognitive functions. Our studies on the development of attentional processes like task switching, error monitoring and attentional networks in normal children as well as those with ADHD have shown that 6-9 years of age is an active period for the development of cognitive control functions for normal children but not for children with ADHD. We are currently working on the development of attentional modulation of emotions in children and adolescents. Cognitive Disorders We are working on developmental disorders like dyslexia and Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have developed a battery of tests in Hindi and English language for the identification of dyslexia and are currently standardizing the battery. We are looking at the issues related to biliteracy in dyslexia in Hindi and English language. We are also looking at the interaction between auditory processing and auditory attention deficits in dyslexia. We have done a preliminary ERP study on the neuro-cognitive mechanisms of remediation in dyslexia and we found electrophysiological changes after remediation in early as well as late stages of processing. We have also conducted experiments on Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We have identified the cognitive markers like error monitoring, task switching, response inhibition and delay aversion as diagnostic markers of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Decision Making In this research we aim to investigate the decision making under uncertainty and the effect of various factors such as emotions, social context and motivation on decision utility and outcome utility. In one of the current studies we plan to investigate the effect on experience of regret/ rejoice and subsequent choice by manipulating the current emotional state of the subject. Laterality effects with a task involving the ultimatum game has been performed which indicate that emotions affect decision making and this effect shows different asymmetries in brain depending on the visual field in which stimuli were presented. Recently, we have also started to explore how attention interacts with Decision Making and the amount of information used in making decisions. Learning and Memory In this research, we are investigating how humans acquire and perform sequential and categorization skills. In the sequential skill learning experiment, we would like to formalize a theory related to chunking and working memory by independently varying the short-range and long-range memory loads. In the category learning project, we are examining the effects of local and global features of stimuli during unimodal and crossmodal category learning. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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