The Canadian Action and Perception Network
CAPnet
The Canadian Action and Perception Network is a Canada-wide neuroscience research consortium for the study of action and perception.
The mandate of CAPnet is to promote communication and major collaborative projects on action and perception, both between the core member universities and with their academic, clinical, and industrial partners. From 2008 to 2019, the flagship event for CAPnet was an annual satellite meeting at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN), co-organized with the Canadian Physiological Society (CPS). Our next meetings will be biennial independent two day-meetings starting in June 2022.
Over half of the human brain is involved in processes related to sensation, perception, and movement control, so to study action and perception is really to study how the brain works. Conversely, most disorders, diseases, and injuries of the central nervous system -- currently affecting about one billion people worldwide -- disrupt these processes in some way. The long-term goals of CAPnet are to understand how the brain allows people to perceive and move in the world and to determine how we might help the people who have trouble with these basic functions.
History
CAPnet was founded in 2008 by Professor Doug Crawford at York University, along with partners at Western University and Queen’s University. Over the years, the network grew to include researchers at McGill and the Université de Montréal, the University of British Columbia, and multiple universities in the prairies before becoming pan-Canadian.
CAPnet was successful at bringing partners together for two successful Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). The first of these (CREATE CAN-ACT) led to the development of an annual summer school in Computational Sensory-Motor Neuroscience (CoSMo) that is open to trainees throughout the world. The second of these (Brain in Action) brought researchers from York, Queen's and Western together with researchers from Philipps-University Marburg and Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen in Germany to form an international training program for graduate students.
CAPnet is open to action and perception researchers throughout Canada. To join, please send a brief letter or e-mail summarizing your interest, along with a curriculum vitae.
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