Title: Am I Spikes Over Time?
Speaker: Leslie Smith, Department of Computing Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling 
Wednesday 7th December - 16:00-17:30 - Room 343, Huxley Building, South Kensington campus, 
Imperial College, London, SW7 2A, UK

Abstract: No-one seriously doubts that the brain is the site of the mind. But what is the nature 
of this sited-ness? What are the candidates? Von der Malsburg has a much-cited paper entitled 
"Am I thinking Assemblies" in 1988: but what does that imply? We are tempted to assume that what 
we can measure is what matters (whether that be local field potentials, spikes, fMRI measurements, 
or others. Indeed, much has been made of mind-reading machines based on fMRI in some parts of the 
press.  But what are the alternatives, and why and how might we pursue this issue?

Biography: Leslie Smith (B.Sc. 1973, Ph.D 1981), has been Professor of Computing Science at 
Stirling University since 2000. Current research interests include early auditory processing, 
Neuroinformatics, and asking difficult questions, like the title of this seminar. He is currently 
Head of Computing Science and Mathematics at Stirling, but hopes to get more research done after 
August when he returns to being plain professor.