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Time: 14:00-15:30 on Tue., Nov. 3, 2020

Venue: B321, Medical science building

Speaker：Li-ping Wang

Host: Dr. Bo Hong

Title: Representation of sequences in human and macaque brains
Abstract: Sequence learning, the ability to encode and represent the order of discrete elements occurring in a sequence, is an essential function of working memory and a ubiquitous facet of cognition. A sequence of images, sounds, or words can be stored at several levels of details, from specific items and their timing to an abstract structure. There is much evidence that non-human animals can learn sequences based on statistical transition probabilities, chunking, ordinal knowledge, or algebraic patterns. However, attempts to teach them sequences with nested or recursive structures, which are characteristic of human languages, have mostly met with negative results. The neural mechanisms underlying these different levels of sequence processing remain unexplored. The goal of our lab is to investigate 1) How the brain maintains a sequence of information in working memory and what the underlying computational mechanisms are; 2) How humans and monkeys learn relational structures in sequences and use the structures for sequence compression and prediction; 3) Whether non-human primates can produce temporal sequences whose complexity approximates that found in human languages, and how the abstract sequence with embedded structures is represented in the brain.
Short Bio: Dr. Li-Ping Wang received his B.S. in Biology from East China Normal University (ECNU) Shanghai in 2003. From 2003 to 2009, he was in a joint PhD program between Johns Hopkins University and ECNU and received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from ECNU in 2009. He studied the tactile working memory in non-human primates under the supervision of Profs. Yong-Di Zhou and Steven Hsiao. He then did his first postdoctoral work with Prof. Yasushi Miyashita at the University of Tokyo in Japan, and got his second postdoc training by Prof. Stanislas Dehaene at INSERM NeuroSpin brain imaging center in France. In Paris, Wang focused on neural representations of language syntax in both humans and nonhuman primates. In 2016, Wang joined the Institute of Neuroscience in Chinese Academy of Sciences full time as Investigator and Head of the Laboratory of Comparative Psychobiology. His main interests are the neural mechanisms underlying sequence learning, working memory and bodilyself-consciousness.