Abstract: Deaf people use sign language. Hearing people use expressive hand movements when they speak -- even if they are blind. Yet monkeys have distinctive set of alarm calls and other types of vocal communication. Michael Arbib will argue that the path from nonhuman primate vocalisations of 20 million years ago to modern human speech was indirect, and that the recognition and imitation of hand movements and skill in pantomime were crucial in the evolution of the language-ready human brain.
Biographical note: Michael A. Arbib is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, as well as a Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Southern California (USC). He has also been named as one of a small group of University Professors at USC in recognition of his contributions across many disciplines. The thrust of his work is expressed in the title of his first book, Brains, Machines and Mathematics (McGraw-Hill, 1964). The brain is not a computer in the current technological sense, but he has based his career on the argument that we can learn much about machines from studying brains, and much about brains from studying machines. He has thus always worked for an interdisciplinary environment in which computer scientists and engineers can talk to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. At the University of Massachusetts he helped found the Center for Systems Neuroscience, the Cognitive Science Program, and the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics, for each of which he served as director. At USC, he was founder and first Director of the Center for Neural Engineering and the USC Brain Project, an interdisciplinary project in neuroinformatics. He helped develop the NSL Neural Simulation Language and ARDB, the Action Recognition Database, and is extracting lessons from the analysis of vertebrate brain organization for the design of novel computer architectures integrating learning, cooperative computation and perceptual robotics. His current research focuses on mechanisms underlying the coordination of perception and action. This is tackled at two levels: via schema theory, which is applicable both in top-down analyses of brain function and human cognition as well as in studies of machine vision and robotics; and through the detailed analysis of neural networks, working closely with the experimental findings of neuroscientists on mechanisms for eye-hand coordination in humans and monkeys. He is now using his insights into the monkey brain to develop a new theory of the evolution of human language. Arbib is the author or editor of about 35 books. His edited volume, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks (The MIT Press, Second Edition, 2003) is a massive compendium embracing studies in detailed neuronal function, system models of brain regions, connectionist models of psychology and linguistics, and mathematical, biological and applied studies of learning. Neural Organization: Structure, Function, and Dynamics (The MIT Press, 1998), co-authored with Peter Érdi and the late John Szentágothai, provides a comprehensive view of the working of the brain. ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED
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