Roland Potthast Webhome

Science Flash

Recent results and activities in our group, 2010_03_10.

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_03_10.

JN Factory - Christian Blog: Children and Parenthood III - Children of the Father ...

Friday, Mar 5, 2010. God is called "the father" in the New Testament. Jesus calls him "my father", but he also uses the term father for God's relation to all other humans who believe in him. The central prayer in the New Testament has the title "Our Father". Many parables talk about a father and his sons and daughters.

God the Father

God is the father. He is also sometimes called "mother" in the prophets/psalms. Humans in men and women originate from him - he knows both fatherhood and motherhood from its core! God has created all this, how could we think of him as some abstract being who would not know all the details, the feelings, the challenges and the joy of parenthood? He is the prototype and template for all parenthood. He is the origin of our feelings as well as our reason. He is the creator of parents and children, as a model and physical realization of our relation to him, of his relation to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit.

The key goal of the New Testament is to bring us back to a relation to God, to bring us back to the state where we are truly "his children" and he is "our father". The observation is that when we live without God, we live no longer in a way in which we are his children. We live as if we would not know him - and we do not know him in this state. We are separated from him. But we can discover the eternal living father again. He is there and has always been there in the history of mankind. He has always talked to us, he always acted and showed his fingerprints in our immediate environment. With Jesus, he comes very close to us and formulates an explicit invitation to come back to him in faith.

Children by Faith

Faith is the way how we come back to the Lord. Parent ship is a relation. It is not just a fact which originates from something which happened in the past (a birth or origin). If there is no living relationship, the parents are dead for the children and the children are dead for the parents. But when we live a relationship, then things are different. God wants such a relationship. It is called "faith".

Faith does not primarily mean that I believe something which I would not know. But it means that I build my life on what I hear from the Lord. I put my trust in him. I believe what he says. I trust on his mercy, his love, his justice and reliability. He wants me to live, not to die. He wants me to flourish, not to wither. [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.