Neurobiopsychology - Cognitive Science

Neurobiopsychology
What is your main research focus?
Understanding the human behaviour, and this will require understanding the
brain, under natural conditions. My emphasis is on the processing of natural
stimuli, cross-modal integration, and understanding the relation of action and
perception.
• Natural visual stimuli. Capturing natural visual stimuli with an emphasis
on viewpoint, colour, motion and disparity; Image statistics including
features like luminance, orientation, colour, texture, disparity, motion.
Unsupervised learning of receptive field properties in neuronal
networks interfaced with behaving agents. Adaptation of neuronal
representations in mouse cortex to a naturalistic environment.
Comparison of simulated receptive field with neuronal response
properties in mammalian cortex.
• Cross-modal integration under natural conditions. Integration of visual,
auditory and haptic information in sensory processing. This is
investigated in psychophysical tasks performed by humans,
physiological measurements based on EEG, as well as in artificial
agents. Theoretical investigation of cross-modal interaction in neuronal
networks with an emphasis on the dynamics.
• Overt attention under natural conditions. Contribution of visual features
to a saliency map. Interaction of stimulus features with behavioural
context. Integration of bottom-up and top-down signals in the human
brain (EEG and fMRI) and neuronal networks. Development of
alternative models of overt attention.
• Interaction of action and perception under natural conditions.
Measures of behaviour and decisions, influence of action on the
stimulus statistics, active sensing in rodents and artificial agents.

Where do you want Cognitive Science Osnabrück to be in 2010? Tell us your
vision!
• A European centre of cognitive science. We form an institute
concentrating on understanding high-level cognitive behaviour. I believe,
that these topics are tightly interrelated and benefit from a combined
study. The institute should offer a wide range of experimental methods,
develop advanced models of human cognition, and create artificial
cognitive agents.
What do you offer for cooperation with the other research groups of our
institute? And what would you like to be offered by them?
• We offer techniques like, eye-tracking, EEG, robot/mouse behaviour,
simulation platform, …
• We happily use any advanced sensor technology, wireless data acquisition,
mobile sensing, tools for language production,
• We highly appreciate collaboration on the topic of simultaneous existence
of analogue and symbolic representations in the brain.
• Language understanding and language production in HCIs.
What are the most important topics that should be worked on within our
institute?
• I think we should not concentrate on a single topic, but cover a fair
selection of high-level cognitive behaviour. These include, but are not
restricted to, (1) all aspects of attention, as it is pervasive phenomenon,
(2) language of course, (3) action planning, which is a wide open field, (4)
emotions, being very human. We should avoid that there is a one-to-one
mapping of groups and techniques onto topics. All/most topics should be
addressed by multiple groups with many different techniques.