Call for Registration | 8th Groningen Spring School on Cognitive Modeling
– ACT-R, Nengo, PRIMs, Neuromorphic Intelligence –
Date: 30 March-2 April 2026
Location: Groningen, the Netherlands
Fee: € 305 (late fee after February 28 will be € 355)
More information and registration: www.ai.rug.nl/springschool/
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The 8th Spring School on Cognitive Modeling will cover four different modeling paradigms: ACT-R, Nengo, PRIMs, and for the first time Neuromorphic Intelligence! Each of these topics consists of a series of lectures, as well as a number of hands-on exercises (tutorials).
Highlights
- ACT-R, Nengo, PRIMS, Neuromorphic Intelligence all in one place!
- A deep immersion through hands-on-tutorials and lectures in one modeling paradigm
- Guest Lectures
- Poster Session
- Dinner
- Fun!
We recommend focusing primarily on one modeling paradigm with lectures and hands-on-tutorials. You can choose a second modeling paradigm and attend just the lectures. Of course, you are free to budget your time more or less as you wish, but past experience has found this to be the most fruitful for students.
To give students a broader picture of the field, there will be a special session ‘Cognitive Modelling in Action’, which will present practical applications of different modelling paradigms and give a taster of modelling approaches not covered in the four main tracks. There will also be two guest lectures. Participants are encouraged to attend both of these events.
To kick off the program, there will be a poster session, where students present themselves and their research. We will also get some time together outside of lectures with a city tour and our traditional spring school dinner!
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ACT-R
Teachers: Jelmer Borst & Stephen Jones (University of Groningen)
Website: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/
ACT-R is a high-level cognitive theory and simulation system for developing cognitive models for tasks that vary from simple reaction time experiments to driving a car, learning algebra, and air traffic control. ACT-R can be used to develop process models of a task at a symbolic level. Participants will follow a compressed five-day version of the traditional summer school curriculum. We will also cover the connection between ACT-R and fMRI.
Nengo
Teacher: Terry Stewart (University of Waterloo)
Website: http://www.nengo.ca
Nengo is a toolkit for converting high-level cognitive theories into low-level spiking neuron implementations. In this way, aspects of model performance such as response accuracy and reaction times emerge as a consequence of neural parameters such as the neurotransmitter time constants. It has been used to model adaptive motor control, visual attention, serial list memory, reinforcement learning, Tower of Hanoi, and fluid intelligence. Participants will learn to construct these kinds of models, starting with generic tasks like representing values and positions, and ending with full production-like systems. There will also be special emphasis on extracting various forms of data out of a model, such that it can be compared to experimental data.
PRIMs
Teacher: Niels Taatgen (University of Groningen)
Website: https://www.ai.rug.nl/~niels/prims/index.html
How do people handle and prioritize multiple tasks? How can we learn something in the context of one task, and partially benefit from it in another task? The goal of PRIMs is to cross the artificial boundary that most cognitive architectures have imposed on themselves by studying single tasks. It has mechanisms to model transfer of cognitive skills, and the competition between multiple goals. In the tutorial we will look at how PRIMs can model phenomena of cognitive transfer and cognitive training, and how multiple goals compete for priority in models of distraction.
Neuromorphic Intelligence
Teachers: Giacomo Indiveri (University of Zürich) & Elisabetta Chicca (University of Groningen)
Websites: https://www.ini.uzh.ch/en/research/groups/ncs.html & https://www.rug.nl/research/zernike/bio-inspired-circuits-and-systems/chicca-group/
For the first time, the brand new course Neuromorphic intelligence using asynchronous mixed-signal neural processing systems will be part of the Cognitive Modeling Spring School! More details will be announced soon on our website.