AU CBCS, Japanese Instt tie-up on cards

ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY'S (AU) Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS) is planning to enter into major research collaborations with Japan's prestigious Riken Brain Sciences Institute (Riken BSI) near Tokyo.

Dr Narayanan Srinivasan of CBCS has been invited as a visiting scientist at Riken BSI and during his month-long stay from June 7 to July 6 he will hold detailed discussions with the Institute authorities and researchers to explore grounds for collaborative research on behalf of CBCS.

Riken BSI is a world renowned brain research institute with more than 50 laboratories and hosts a lot of international scientists.

Riken is fully supporting the travel as well as all boarding and lodging of Dr Srinivasan. He will be working with Prof Cees Van Leeuwen, Director of the Laboratory for Perceptual Dynamics.

They will be working in the areas of Visual Perception and Dyslexia.

"New research projects on Visual Perception and Dyslexia are being planned and will be initiated in the near future. It is expected that expensive equipment like eye-tracker which is used a lot in research on Attention and Reading will be made available to CBCS free of cost due to this collaboration between CBCS and Riken," informed Dr Narayanan Srinivasan.

He said that more interactions between the two institutions in the form of new research initiatives involving CBCS researchers and their counterparts at Riken, visits of faculty members from both CBCS and Riken to each other's institute and centre as well as summer programme opportunities for CBCS students at Riken to help them add to their knowledge and aid in ongoing researches are also expected to result from the visit.

The CBCS at present is focusing on research in various areas of behavioural and cognitive sciences including Visual Perception, Attention, Computational Modelling of Cognitive Processes, Intelligent Computing, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Cognitive Electrophysiology, Indian approaches to Mind, Stress and Health, and Cultural aspects of Cognition.

Various research projects on Learning Disabilities, Spatial and Object based Attention, Computational Humour, Effects of Malnutrition on Cognitive Processes, Music Perception are currently in progress.

"We have decided that our main efforts for collaborative research would be in the fields of Visual Perception and Dyslexia as both the centres are interested in these fields and have some ongoing researches in related fields. If successful, this collaboration would prove beneficial in long term for both the centres and for research work of faculty members and students of CBCS and Riken," Dr Srinivasan added.