AI Colloquium

The Bernoulli Institute AI Colloquium is a regular meeting where faculty and students  can hear and discuss the current research related to the institute's three research themes (Computing and Cognition; Geometry and its Applications; Systems, Data and Society) from inside and outside the University of Groningen. 

Colloquia are scheduled monthly during the teaching blocks, with the exception of December, preferentially on Thursday afternoon. Meetings at the end of the day are followed by the PoCoBo - a post-colloquium borrel.

For external colloquia, there is a limited opportunity to have dinner with the speaker in the evening. If you are interested in this, please contact Harmen or Stephen a few days before the colloquium.

Establishing the Electrophysiological Correlates of Mind Wandering and Detecting its Occurrence

Julia Kam, University of Calgary

Thursday 11 June 2026 16:00-17:00

TBA

An inevitable feature of our conscious experience is that our minds often shift away from task demands to our inner milieu. Another core feature of our thoughts is that they dynamically shift from topic to topic. Both are considered different types of mind wandering. With growing recognition that mind wandering is highly prevalent in our everyday life and linked to wide ranging impacts on our daily functioning, there has been a surge of interest in understanding its neural basis. In this talk, I will discuss the electrophysiological correlates of both types of mind wandering. I will further review work that combines machine learning and EEG to detect episodes of both types of mind wandering. Taken together, this work highlights objective markers of mind wandering, which can reliably predicts its occurrence.