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Speaker:
Hanspeter A. Mallot, University of Tübingen

Course content:

Cognitive neuroscience strives to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the various cognitive abilities of animals and humans, ranging from putatively simple processes such as perception or basic motor control to “mental” processes such as remembering, thinking, having plans or wishes, or being conscious. These cognitive processes differ from simpler, stimulus-response-type processes in that inner (or “mental”) states must be assumed to predict an agent’s behaviour. Cognitive behaviour is thus characterized by goal-dependent flexibility, i.e. the ability to react quickly and adequately depending not only on external stimuli but also on internal goals. Since presence of such cognitive phenomena can be inferred only from behaviour, cognitive neuroscience always combines behavioural and physiological measurements.

Following an introductory section on definitions, theoretical concepts and
methodologies, the course will take a phenomenological approach focussing on three aspects of cognitive neuroscience. In Perception and Attention, the levels of visual processing from early, preattentive perception (e.g., form, motion, and colour), to cue-integration and visual attention and on to high level object recognition will be discussed. Spatial Cognition will serve as an example of memory processes. This domain of cognition was central in the development of the notions of declarative and non-declarative memories and, in the rodent place cell system, offers on of the best understood examples of neural mechanisms of cognition. The last part will be devoted to Language as the most important cognitive behaviour in humans.

Discipines:
Cognitive science, Neuroscience, Perception, Spatial Cognition, Language

Example of own work:

• Mallot H.A., Basten K. (2009) Embodied spatial cognition: biological and artificial
  systems. Image and Vision Computing 27:1658-1670

References:

• Purves D, Brannon EM, Cabeza R, Huettel SA, LaBar KS, Platt ML, Woldorff MG (2008) Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience. Sunderland MA: Sinauer
• Banich MT, Compton RJ (2010) Cognitive Neuroscience. 3. edition, Wadsworth Publishing

CV:

Hanspeter Mallot received his PhD from the Faculty of Biology, University of Mainz, Germany, in 1986. In the following years, he held postdoctoral and research positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ruhr-University Bochum, the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen and the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin. In 2000, he was appointed Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Eberhard-Karls-University, Tübingen. Research focusses on spatial cognition in humans and robots, using behavioral experiments in virtual reality, eye-movement recordings, and simulated agents in hard- and software.