Generative Adversarial Collaborations
A part of the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference series!
About the CCN GAC Project
What are the most exciting challenges and controversies in cognitive computational neuroscience right now? How can we form feasible plans to solve them collaboratively? As part of the 2025 CCN Program, the CCN Program Committee is organizing the sixth installment of our innovative event type: the Generative Adversarial Collaborations (GACs). The goal of a CCN GAC is to identify, debate, and make concrete plans to address the most challenging, controversial, and exciting theoretical and empirical debates in our field. Check out the proposals, workshops recordings, and position papers of our previous 17 GACs from 2020-2024.
We highly encourage the CCN community to actively engage in the CCN GAC online discussions throughout the summer preceding the CCN annual meeting, the in-person GAC workshops as part of the CCN annual meeting in August, and the ensuing GAC publications and solicited commentaries.
Selected CCN GAC proposals will participate in the following:
Co-organize and attend online discussions in summer 2025, followed by a kickoff CCN GAC workshop as part of the annual meeting in August 2025 (details at https://ccneuro.org/).
Write a collaborative paper based on the CCN GAC, to be submitted to a special issue of the Neurons, Behavior, Data, and Theory journal with target date early the following year. This position paper will identify the concrete goals (theoretical or experimental) of the GAC over the next several years, and will be accompanied by commentary pieces (especially from workshop audience members) submitted for peer review to the same journal, to be linked with the collaborative manuscript.
Attend and present progress at the following CCN.
Learn more about how to submit a GAC proposal.
Read more about the GAC process in this TICS paper (2025) and in this detailed guide "Generative Adversarial Collaborations: A practical guide for conference organizers and participating scientists", summarizing the GAC experience and lessons learned from the perspective of organizers and participating teams.
CCN GACs are organized by the CCN Program Committee. Email questions to gac@ccneuro.org.