Roland Potthast Webhome

Science Flash

Recent results and activities in our group, 2010_09_03.

Working on Cognitive Neurodynamics

The neural field equation is an important and basic equation which reflects the structure of our brain. It summarizes the activity of millions of neurons into a mean field. The activity of neurons in some little area of the brain then leads to the spread of brain potentials, which is modelled by a kernel w(x,y), which describes the influence of the neurons at point y on the neurons at point x. The change in the potential at x is proportional to the integral of all influences over y in some region B of the space (B for "brain").

Recently, our group on cognitive neurodynamics with Peter beim Graben, R.P. and Dimitris Pinotsis analysed the existence of solutions of this integro- differential equation via the Banach fix point theorem. A global existence result for inhomogeneous kernels w could be proven. This builds the basis for further analysis, modelling and the treatment of inverse problems.

ResearchGroup

Gö: Uni Göttingen, Ger; J: Research Center Jülich, Ger; Rdg: Uni Reading, UK

Research Students
Corinna Burckard (Rdg, PhD-Stud)

Ndifreke Etuk (Rdg, PhD-Stud)

Borix Marx (Gö, PhD-Stud)

Martin Wannert (J, PhD-Stud)

Muhammad Zaighum Zia (Gö, PhD-Stud)

Natalie Lowery (Rdg, PhD-Stud)

Alexander Moodey (Rdg, PhD-Stud)

Further Group Members
Daniel Langhans
Tobias Schwab
Florian Lackert

Local Collaborators
Dr. Timothy Astin (Archaeology)

Prof. Simon Chandler-Wilde (Maths)

Dr. David Ezra (Oxford)

Dr. Peter beim Graben (Linguistics)

Prof. Peter Grindrod (Maths)

Prof. Geoff Mitchell (Optics)

Dr. Tobias Kuna (Maths)

Dr. Slawek Nasuto (Engineering)

Prof. Doug Saddy (Linguistics)

Today's Topic

Good morning!

Inverse problems are a broad and fascinating area which has rapidly grown over the last 20 years. Many new ideas and techniques have been developed to identify quantities in complex systems. You will find papers, ideas and methods reflected in the contributions and links on this page.

Have a great day! Roland Potthast

Upcoming and recent Events

Summer School Cognitive Neurodynamics Reading

Participate in the Reading Cognitive Neuroscience Summer School 2009 and

learn what cognitive neuroscience is about!
explore how our brain works!
get to know how interdisciplinary research is carried out!
study how cognitive processes like language are reflected in the neuron-based brain processes!

The Summer School provides the opportunity to spend some days in a stimulating environment at Reading and have fun together with an international range of first class researchers!

July 06 - 10, 2009, University of Reading, UK.

For more details see Summer School Webpage.

Reading Analytic Workbench Release 1.0

Researchers and developers of the University of Reading have designed the Reading Analytic Workbench (RAW)
Reading Analytic Workbench

is a web-based computing platform developed at the University of Reading,

provides access to the advanced computing clusters run at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) and the Department of Mathematics at Reading,

offer you a simple way to access a wide range of specialised knowledge and special algorithms developed by researchers and staff of the University.

For more details see RAW Access Online.

Studentships available

There are several studentsships available in our working groups, inlcuding one studentship to work on data assimilation for dynamical systems and several studentships in our Cognitive Systems Group at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN). (These studentships assume British nationality.)
For more details see

Studentship Data Assimilation

Studentships CINN.

Special Issue Integral Equations and Applications

A special issue of the Journal of Integral Equations and Applications honoring Rainer Kress has been published as Volume 21, Number 2 in Summer 2009 (Editor R. Potthast).
The issue includes contributions by C. J. S. Alves and N. F. M. Martins; 153-178 , T. Arens and A. Lechleiter; 179-202, F. Cakoni, D. Colton and H. Haddar; 203-227, S. N. Chandler-Wilde, I. G. Graham, S. Langdon and M. Lindner; 229-279, B. Hofmann and L. V. Wolfersdorf; 281-295, J. Liu and R. Potthast; 297-315 and N. S. Tezel; 317-328.
For more details see JIEA Online.

Workshop Dynamical Systems in Language

As part of our Cognitive Neuroscience research agenda a two day workshop on Dynamical Systems in Language is organized at the University of Reading, September 08 - 09, 2008.
The aim of the workshop is to bridge the gaps between neural computation and symbolic cognition and will focus on issues such as: computational mechanics, grammar classification by dynamical systems, dynamical language processing, connectionist parsing, dynamical field approaches to symbolic cognition.
For more details see Workshop Webpage.

Special Issue of Cognitive Neurodynamics

Peter beim Graben, Doug Saddy and Roland Potthast are editors for a special issule of the new Springer Journal Cognitive Neurodynamics. The task is to collect recent developments in cognitive neurodynamics, for example the representation of cognitive processes via dynamic fields. The issue is scheduled for the second half of 2008 to appear.

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Christian Blog

Thoughts and reasoning about christian faith today. Date: 2010_09_03.

C-Text - Christian Blog: Ideas for us 6 - Reliability and Truth ...

Friday, September 3, 2010. It's the last day of our fortnight of "ideas for us", ideas for our modern world, ideas where we should go, what we could or should do. Ideas which can shape our world since they attract humans and help to further develop society.

Trustful People Around ...

The world would be different if truth would reign. Imagine everyone would be fully truthful and trustworthy! Our environment would be different. No one would steal any more. No one would take things away. You could rely on the words people say. Business would be different. Risks would be much smaller. We would all be much wealthier, much better off with the things we have, with the investment of time and effort, ... Truth would make a real difference!

Our insight into many things is limited. We do not necessarily have complete insight into what is true, what is reality, what is the case. In this sense we might not be able to "always tell the truth", since we are searching for it. Science is trying to understand something, but our understanding might be a theory only, it might catch only a part of the truth. When people observe some accident, their observations might be biased by their personal perspective. And we do not always remember everything right.

However, it is possible to be truthful and trustworthy even with a limited insight. You can admit where you do not know the full truth. You can say what is true and act according to the truth.

God is trustworthy ...

A world full of truth is bound to come. God is trustworthy. He is reliable. And he is full of truth. Jesus called himself the way, the truth and the life. He connects truth and life - without truth there is no eternal life, and even here in the middle of our daily struggle, we quickly realize that without truth no stable relationships can grow. Without truth we are lost.

Let us work towards a society built on truth. Many of our forefathers knew the important role of truth. They worked towards it and we benefit from their work today - with institutions which allow to go to court, with newspapers and media which allow things to become public, with basic human rights which have become part of our constitutions and our ethics.

Full truth is a vision, which points us to the character of the eternal God, to Jesus Christ. In his company, truth gets an even deeper meaning, with truth about our goals and our motivation being fully visible, with the truth of eternal love and appreciation fully revealed. Truth is an adventure - the adventure to get to know the source of life. [R.W.E.P., Jesus-Network.eu]

My Christian Blog can be found on the site of the Jesus-Network

For online Bible texts please visit our translation project Jesus Network Bible, where our team works on a translation of the bible into modern English and provide notes, comments and disucssions on the texts.