A 10-day GIAN course was held on “The Science and Significance of Attention” from August 5th – 15th, 2019 at Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences (CNCS), School of Medical Sciences, University of Hyderabad(UoH). The course was taught by Prof. Raymond Klein from Dalhousie University, Halifax and course coordinator Prof. Ramesh Mishra, Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, UoH. About 25 students from various universities/institutes such as Indian institute of information technology, Hyderabad, IIT Gandhinagar, Centre for converging technologies, Jaipur and University of Hyderabad participated in the course.
The course covered some fundamental theories of attention and also included lectures on using findings from basic research to solve real-world problems. There were tutorial sessions accompanying each topic where students were asked to read research articles on their own and discuss amongst themselves. There were also laboratory sessions which introduced participants to experimental methods of studying attention.
The valedictory ceremony was held on August 14th at CV Raman auditorium. Prof Klein, Prof. Prakash Babu, Dean in-charge, School of Medical Sciences and Prof. Mishra were present in the valedictory ceremony. Prof. Klein thanked the organisers of GIAN at UoH as well as MHRD for supporting this initiative. He hoped that the course had been useful and informative for spreading awareness about attention research. Prof. Babu emphasized on further research on attention and cognition and said that GIAN is an important venue for promoting such activities. Prof. Mishra mentioned that CNCS has been organising many such programmes for spreading awareness about cognitive science research areas among students and researchers.