Research
Our research
Topics
Research of our unit focuses on issues in Cognitive Neuroscience. Using methods of Biological and Experimental Psychology, processes and architectures of voluntary and involuntary attention, (auditory, visual, and audio-visual) perception, (working) memory, learning, emotion, language and judgment are investigated. Our research follows an human information processing approach and emphasizes the predictive nature of our mental system. The laboratory's equipment has been selected to meet this goal.
Event-related brain potentials (ERP) are our most important dependent measure. In contrast to behavioral response time measures, ERPs provide a task-independent, continuous on-line measure of brain activity with a high temporal resolution that can be registered independent of overt behavior. We try to infer on the processing steps underlying the effects on the behavioral and neurophysiological effects of our experimental manipulations (mental chronometry) and try to make inferences on the cognitive architecture by determining the neural generators of the effects.
Further examples of our research can be found on individual members' pages and their lists of publications.