Photo of the Old Joe clock tower at the University of Birmingham. Logo of University of Birmingham. Banner for the Mechanistic Basis of Foraging Conference, 3rd to the 5th of November, Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham

Programme

Monday 3rd November

Time Session 
18:00 - 19.30 Welcome Reception and Posters                                                                                                                                                                   

Tuesday 4th November

Time Session
8:30 - 9:15 Registration and Refreshments
9:15 - 9:30Opening Remarks
9:30 - 10:15 Keynote Speaker - Background reward rate and effort shape behavioural and neural signatures of learning and decision-making in human foraging
Dr. Miriam Klein-Flugge, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
10:15 - 11:00 Blitz Talks:
  • A progressive ratio task with costly resets reveals adaptive effort-delay tradeoffs
    Zeena Rivera, Phd Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • The Effort Based Forage Task: An Ethological Behavioural Test for Assessing Motivation and Apathy-related Behaviour in Mice
    Dr. Megan Jackson, Senior Research Associate, University Of Bristol
  • Computational mechanisms underlying how humans adapt their foraging choices to the average effort of the environment
    Emma Scholey, Phd Candidate, University Of Birmingham
11:00 - 11:30 Refreshment Break
11:30 - 12:00 Navigational strategies for foraging: insights from ants and flies
Dr. Hannah Haberkern, Emmy Noether Group Leader, University of Würzburg
12:00 - 12:30 Stochastic choice drives variability in patch foraging decisions across species
Prof. Mark Humphries, Professor of Computational Neuroscience, University of Nottingham
12:30 - 13:00 Title tbc
Dr. Aaron M. Bornstein, Associate Professor in Cognitive Sciences, University of California
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 14:30 Brain-wide dynamics of time-limited foraging strategies in changing environments
Dr. Jennifer Li, Max Planck Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
14:30 - 15:00 Aeon: an open-source platform to study the neural basis of ethological behaviours over naturalistic timescales
Dr. Dario Campagner, Senior Research Fellow, University College London (UCL)
15:00 - 15:30 Title tbc
Prof. Dean Mobbs, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology
15:30 - 16:00 Refreshment Break
16:00 - 16:45 Keynote Speaker - Neural basis of prey-pursuit behavior
Prof. Benjamin Hayden, Professor of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University
16:45 - 17:20 Discussion Session                                                                             
17:20 Conference Close day 1
18:00 - Late Conference Dinner

Wednesday 5th November

Time Session
9:00 - 9:30 Registration and Refreshments                                                                                                                
9:30 - 10:15 Keynote Speaker - Cognition and decision making in wild foraging hummingbirds
Prof. Susan Healy, Professor & Director of Centre for Biological Diversity, School of Biology, University of St. Andrews
10:15 - 11:00 Blitz Talks:
  • Optimal foraging under structured replenishment
    Roxana Zerati, Postdoc, Max Planck Institute For Biological Cybernetics
  • Foragax: Large-Scale Agent-Based Modeling of Adaptive Multi-Agent Foraging
    Siddharth Chaturvedi, Phd Candidate, Radboud University
  • Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making
    Darius Lewen, Postdoc, MPI for Dynamics and Self-organization
11:00 - 11:30 Refreshment Break
11:30 - 12:00 Foraging: From Food to Inquiry
Dr. David Barack, Research Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania & Lingnan University
12:00 - 12:30 Ecology dictates the benefits of memory: an empirical case study in foraging bees
Prof. Elli Leadbeater, Professor of Biodiversity and Ecosystems Research, University College London
12:30 - 13:00 Naturalistic foraging tasks in freely moving rodents for mechanistic and neuronal insights into learning, decision-making, and movement
Dr. David Robbe, INSERM research director, Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée (INMED), INSERM, Aix-Marseille Université
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 14:30 Humans forage in reinforcement learning tasks
Prof. Becket Ebitz, Assistant Professor, University of Montreal
14:30 - 15:00 Exploration Under Uncertainty: Computational Insights from Childhood Adversity and Adolescence
Dr. Nicholas Furl, Senior Lecturer of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London
15:00 - 15:30 Emotions and individual differences in naturalistic tasks
Dr. Jacquie Scholl, INSERM Research Officer, Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre
15:30 - 16:00 Refreshment Break
16:00 - 16:30 The behavioral mechanisms underlying human social foraging dynamics in the wild
Alexander Schakowski, Predoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
16:30 - 17:00 Neural Circuit Basis for Foraging Under Conflict
Dr. Carolina Rezaval, Associate Professor, University of Birmingham
17:00 Closing remarks

As part of the organisation of this conference, The University of Birmingham is collecting income via registration fees and sponsorships on behalf of the Mechanistic Basis of Foraging organising committtee.


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