The Wu Tsai Institute invites you to its annual conference on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at 100 College Street.
This year’s theme, Embodied and Embedded Brains, challenges us to rethink cognition beyond the brain-in-a-vat metaphor. The event will explore how brain function is shaped by the body, behavior, and environment, reconnecting neuroscience with its roots in real-world experience.
Led by Kia Nobre, WTI Associate Director and Director of the Center for Neurocognition and Behavior, the conference will feature cross-disciplinary perspectives from Wu Tsai Faculty Members, Fellows, and guest speakers.
View the speaker details and the working agenda below. Refreshments and lunch will be provided. A reception will follow the day’s sessions. Send questions to wti@yale.edu.
Working Agenda
Continental breakfast will begin at 9:30 am, and doors will open at 9:45 am.
Kia Nobre, WTI Associate Director and Director of the Center for Neurocognition and Behavior, will welcome attendees and open the conference.
Humans and marmoset monkeys are the rare vocal learners among primates. They are a biological puzzle. Focusing on marmosets, we will first show that vocal learning emerges in a landscape of anatomical changes, not just neural changes. By comparing the two species, we will then consider the possibility that their potential for vocal learning is the product of evolutionary changes to their developmental timing and social structure.
11:00 am | Doug Rothman
Talk details coming soon.
11:20 am | “Agent-based modeling for Motor Control and Social Behavior” by Shreya Saxena
When do we need embodied agents?
11:40 am | Ashlea Segal and Evyn Dickinson
Talk details coming soon.
More details coming soon.
Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomena in humans can be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research.
1:30 pm | “Emotion inference outside of the lab” by Maria Gendron
The talk will highlight how findings from fieldwork challenge simplistic assumptions about the nature of emotion inference and suggest future avenues for bridging lab and world.
1:50 pm | Brian Scasselatti
Talk details coming soon.
2:10 pm | Wu Tsai Postdoctoral Fellows, Weikang Shi and Josue Ortega Caro
Talk details coming soon.
More details coming soon.
More details coming soon.
Attendees will discuss ideas presented from the day’s sessions.
More details coming soon.