Project acronym 19TH-CENTURY_EUCLID
Project Nineteenth-Century Euclid: Geometry and the Literary Imagination from Wordsworth to Wells
Researcher (PI) Alice Jenkins
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2007-StG
Summary This radically interdisciplinary project aims to bring a substantially new field of research – literature and mathematics studies – to prominence as a tool for investigating the culture of nineteenth-century Britain. It will result in three kinds of outcome: a monograph, two interdisciplinary and international colloquia, and a collection of essays. The project focuses on Euclidean geometry as a key element of nineteenth-century literary and scientific culture, showing that it was part of the shared knowledge flowing through elite and popular Romantic and Victorian writing, and figuring notably in the work of very many of the century’s best-known writers. Despite its traditional cultural prestige and educational centrality, geometry has been almost wholly neglected by literary history. This project shows how literature and mathematics studies can draw a new map of nineteenth-century British culture, revitalising our understanding of the Romantic and Victorian imagination through its writing about geometry.
Summary
This radically interdisciplinary project aims to bring a substantially new field of research – literature and mathematics studies – to prominence as a tool for investigating the culture of nineteenth-century Britain. It will result in three kinds of outcome: a monograph, two interdisciplinary and international colloquia, and a collection of essays. The project focuses on Euclidean geometry as a key element of nineteenth-century literary and scientific culture, showing that it was part of the shared knowledge flowing through elite and popular Romantic and Victorian writing, and figuring notably in the work of very many of the century’s best-known writers. Despite its traditional cultural prestige and educational centrality, geometry has been almost wholly neglected by literary history. This project shows how literature and mathematics studies can draw a new map of nineteenth-century British culture, revitalising our understanding of the Romantic and Victorian imagination through its writing about geometry.
Max ERC Funding
323 118 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-01-01, End date: 2011-10-31
Project acronym ABACUS
Project Advancing Behavioral and Cognitive Understanding of Speech
Researcher (PI) Bart De Boer
Host Institution (HI) VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2011-StG_20101124
Summary I intend to investigate what cognitive mechanisms give us combinatorial speech. Combinatorial speech is the ability to make new words using pre-existing speech sounds. Humans are the only apes that can do this, yet we do not know how our brains do it, nor how exactly we differ from other apes. Using new experimental techniques to study human behavior and new computational techniques to model human cognition, I will find out how we deal with combinatorial speech.
The experimental part will study individual and cultural learning. Experimental cultural learning is a new technique that simulates cultural evolution in the laboratory. Two types of cultural learning will be used: iterated learning, which simulates language transfer across generations, and social coordination, which simulates emergence of norms in a language community. Using the two types of cultural learning together with individual learning experiments will help to zero in, from three angles, on how humans deal with combinatorial speech. In addition it will make a methodological contribution by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the three methods.
The computer modeling part will formalize hypotheses about how our brains deal with combinatorial speech. Two models will be built: a high-level model that will establish the basic algorithms with which combinatorial speech is learned and reproduced, and a neural model that will establish in more detail how the algorithms are implemented in the brain. In addition, the models, through increasing understanding of how humans deal with speech, will help bridge the performance gap between human and computer speech recognition.
The project will advance science in four ways: it will provide insight into how our unique ability for using combinatorial speech works, it will tell us how this is implemented in the brain, it will extend the novel methodology of experimental cultural learning and it will create new computer models for dealing with human speech.
Summary
I intend to investigate what cognitive mechanisms give us combinatorial speech. Combinatorial speech is the ability to make new words using pre-existing speech sounds. Humans are the only apes that can do this, yet we do not know how our brains do it, nor how exactly we differ from other apes. Using new experimental techniques to study human behavior and new computational techniques to model human cognition, I will find out how we deal with combinatorial speech.
The experimental part will study individual and cultural learning. Experimental cultural learning is a new technique that simulates cultural evolution in the laboratory. Two types of cultural learning will be used: iterated learning, which simulates language transfer across generations, and social coordination, which simulates emergence of norms in a language community. Using the two types of cultural learning together with individual learning experiments will help to zero in, from three angles, on how humans deal with combinatorial speech. In addition it will make a methodological contribution by comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the three methods.
The computer modeling part will formalize hypotheses about how our brains deal with combinatorial speech. Two models will be built: a high-level model that will establish the basic algorithms with which combinatorial speech is learned and reproduced, and a neural model that will establish in more detail how the algorithms are implemented in the brain. In addition, the models, through increasing understanding of how humans deal with speech, will help bridge the performance gap between human and computer speech recognition.
The project will advance science in four ways: it will provide insight into how our unique ability for using combinatorial speech works, it will tell us how this is implemented in the brain, it will extend the novel methodology of experimental cultural learning and it will create new computer models for dealing with human speech.
Max ERC Funding
1 276 620 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31
Project acronym ACQDIV
Project Acquisition processes in maximally diverse languages: Min(d)ing the ambient language
Researcher (PI) Sabine Erika Stoll
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "Children learn any language that they grow up with, adapting to any of the ca. 7000 languages of the world, no matter how divergent or complex their structures are. What cognitive processes make this extreme flexibility possible? This is one of the most burning questions in cognitive science and the ACQDIV project aims at answering it by testing and refining the following leading hypothesis: Language acquisition is flexible and adaptive to any kind of language because it relies on a small set of universal cognitive processes that variably target different structures at different times during acquisition in every language. The project aims at establishing the precise set of processes and at determining the conditions of variation across maximally diverse languages. This project focuses on three processes: (i) distributional learning, (ii) generalization-based learning and (iii) interaction-based learning. To investigate these processes I will work with a sample of five clusters of languages including longitudinal data of two languages each. The clusters were determined by a clustering algorithm seeking the structurally most divergent languages in a typological database. The languages are: Cluster 1: Slavey and Cree, Cluster 2: Indonesian and Yucatec, Cluster 3: Inuktitut and Chintang, Cluster 4: Sesotho and Russian, Cluster 5: Japanese and Turkish. For all languages, corpora are available, except for Slavey where fieldwork is planned. The leading hypothesis will be tested against the acquisition of aspect and negation in each language of the sample and also against the two structures in each language that are most salient and challenging in them (e. g. complex morphology in Chintang). The acquisition processes also depend on statistical patterns in the input children receive. I will examine these patterns across the sample with respect to repetitiveness effects, applying data-mining methods and systematically comparing child-directed and child-surrounding speech."
Summary
"Children learn any language that they grow up with, adapting to any of the ca. 7000 languages of the world, no matter how divergent or complex their structures are. What cognitive processes make this extreme flexibility possible? This is one of the most burning questions in cognitive science and the ACQDIV project aims at answering it by testing and refining the following leading hypothesis: Language acquisition is flexible and adaptive to any kind of language because it relies on a small set of universal cognitive processes that variably target different structures at different times during acquisition in every language. The project aims at establishing the precise set of processes and at determining the conditions of variation across maximally diverse languages. This project focuses on three processes: (i) distributional learning, (ii) generalization-based learning and (iii) interaction-based learning. To investigate these processes I will work with a sample of five clusters of languages including longitudinal data of two languages each. The clusters were determined by a clustering algorithm seeking the structurally most divergent languages in a typological database. The languages are: Cluster 1: Slavey and Cree, Cluster 2: Indonesian and Yucatec, Cluster 3: Inuktitut and Chintang, Cluster 4: Sesotho and Russian, Cluster 5: Japanese and Turkish. For all languages, corpora are available, except for Slavey where fieldwork is planned. The leading hypothesis will be tested against the acquisition of aspect and negation in each language of the sample and also against the two structures in each language that are most salient and challenging in them (e. g. complex morphology in Chintang). The acquisition processes also depend on statistical patterns in the input children receive. I will examine these patterns across the sample with respect to repetitiveness effects, applying data-mining methods and systematically comparing child-directed and child-surrounding speech."
Max ERC Funding
1 998 438 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31
Project acronym aCROBAT
Project Circadian Regulation Of Brown Adipose Thermogenesis
Researcher (PI) Zachary Philip Gerhart-Hines
Host Institution (HI) KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS4, ERC-2014-STG
Summary Obesity and diabetes have reached pandemic proportions and new therapeutic strategies are critically needed. Brown adipose tissue (BAT), a major source of heat production, possesses significant energy-dissipating capacity and therefore represents a promising target to use in combating these diseases. Recently, I discovered a novel link between circadian rhythm and thermogenic stress in the control of the conserved, calorie-burning functions of BAT. Circadian and thermogenic signaling to BAT incorporates blood-borne hormonal and nutrient cues with direct neuronal input. Yet how these responses coordinately shape BAT energy-expending potential through the regulation of cell surface receptors, metabolic enzymes, and transcriptional effectors is still not understood. My primary goal is to investigate this previously unappreciated network of crosstalk that allows mammals to effectively orchestrate daily rhythms in BAT metabolism, while maintaining their ability to adapt to abrupt changes in energy demand. My group will address this question using gain and loss-of-function in vitro and in vivo studies, newly-generated mouse models, customized physiological phenotyping, and cutting-edge advances in next generation RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry. Preliminary, small-scale validations of our methodologies have already yielded a number of novel candidates that may drive key facets of BAT metabolism. Additionally, we will extend our circadian and thermogenic studies into humans to evaluate the translational potential. Our results will advance the fundamental understanding of how daily oscillations in bioenergetic networks establish a framework for the anticipation of and adaptation to environmental challenges. Importantly, we expect that these mechanistic insights will reveal pharmacological targets through which we can unlock evolutionary constraints and harness the energy-expending potential of BAT for the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes.
Summary
Obesity and diabetes have reached pandemic proportions and new therapeutic strategies are critically needed. Brown adipose tissue (BAT), a major source of heat production, possesses significant energy-dissipating capacity and therefore represents a promising target to use in combating these diseases. Recently, I discovered a novel link between circadian rhythm and thermogenic stress in the control of the conserved, calorie-burning functions of BAT. Circadian and thermogenic signaling to BAT incorporates blood-borne hormonal and nutrient cues with direct neuronal input. Yet how these responses coordinately shape BAT energy-expending potential through the regulation of cell surface receptors, metabolic enzymes, and transcriptional effectors is still not understood. My primary goal is to investigate this previously unappreciated network of crosstalk that allows mammals to effectively orchestrate daily rhythms in BAT metabolism, while maintaining their ability to adapt to abrupt changes in energy demand. My group will address this question using gain and loss-of-function in vitro and in vivo studies, newly-generated mouse models, customized physiological phenotyping, and cutting-edge advances in next generation RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry. Preliminary, small-scale validations of our methodologies have already yielded a number of novel candidates that may drive key facets of BAT metabolism. Additionally, we will extend our circadian and thermogenic studies into humans to evaluate the translational potential. Our results will advance the fundamental understanding of how daily oscillations in bioenergetic networks establish a framework for the anticipation of and adaptation to environmental challenges. Importantly, we expect that these mechanistic insights will reveal pharmacological targets through which we can unlock evolutionary constraints and harness the energy-expending potential of BAT for the prevention and treatment of obesity and diabetes.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 008 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-05-01, End date: 2020-04-30
Project acronym ActionContraThreat
Project Action selection under threat: the complex control of human defense
Researcher (PI) Dominik BACH
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2018-COG
Summary Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation.
To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects.
This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.
Summary
Run away, sidestep, duck-and-cover, watch: when under threat, humans immediately choreograph a large repertoire of defensive actions. Understanding action-selection under threat is important for anybody wanting to explain why anxiety disorders imply some of these behaviours in harmless situations. Current concepts of human defensive behaviour are largely derived from rodent research and focus on a small number of broad, cross-species, action tendencies. This is likely to underestimate the complexity of the underlying action-selection mechanisms. This research programme will take decisive steps to understand these psychological mechanisms and elucidate their neural implementation.
To elicit threat-related action in the laboratory, I will use virtual reality computer games with full body motion, and track actions with motion-capture technology. Based on a cognitive-computational framework, I will systematically characterise the space of actions under threat, investigate the psychological mechanisms by which actions are selected in different scenarios, and describe them with computational algorithms that allow quantitative predictions. To independently verify their neural implementation, I will use wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) in freely moving subjects.
This proposal fills a lacuna between defence system concepts based on rodent research, emotion psychology, and clinical accounts of anxiety disorders. By combining a stringent experimental approach with the formalism of cognitive-computational psychology, it furnishes a unique opportunity to understand the mechanisms of action-selection under threat, and how these are distinct from more general-purpose action-selection systems. Beyond its immediate scope, the proposal has a potential to lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders, and to pave the way towards improved diagnostics and therapies.
Max ERC Funding
1 998 750 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym ADAM
Project The Adaptive Auditory Mind
Researcher (PI) Shihab Shamma
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH4, ERC-2011-ADG_20110406
Summary Listening in realistic situations is an active process that engages perceptual and cognitive faculties, endowing speech with meaning, music with joy, and environmental sounds with emotion. Through hearing, humans and other animals navigate complex acoustic scenes, separate sound mixtures, and assess their behavioral relevance. These remarkable feats are currently beyond our understanding and exceed the capabilities of the most sophisticated audio engineering systems. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate experimentally a novel view of hearing, where active hearing emerges from a deep interplay between adaptive sensory processes and goal-directed cognition. Specifically, we shall explore the postulate that versatile perception is mediated by rapid-plasticity at the neuronal level. At the conjunction of sensory and cognitive processing, rapid-plasticity pervades all levels of auditory system, from the cochlea up to the auditory and prefrontal cortices. Exploiting fundamental statistical regularities of acoustics, it is what allows humans and other animal to deal so successfully with natural acoustic scenes where artificial systems fail. The project builds on the internationally recognized leadership of the PI in the fields of physiology and computational modeling, combined with the expertise of the Co-Investigator in psychophysics. Building on these highly complementary fields and several technical innovations, we hope to promote a novel view of auditory perception and cognition. We aim also to contribute significantly to translational research in the domain of signal processing for clinical hearing aids, given that many current limitations are not technological but rather conceptual. The project will finally result in the creation of laboratory facilities and an intellectual network unique in France and rare in all of Europe, combining cognitive, neural, and computational approaches to auditory neuroscience.
Summary
Listening in realistic situations is an active process that engages perceptual and cognitive faculties, endowing speech with meaning, music with joy, and environmental sounds with emotion. Through hearing, humans and other animals navigate complex acoustic scenes, separate sound mixtures, and assess their behavioral relevance. These remarkable feats are currently beyond our understanding and exceed the capabilities of the most sophisticated audio engineering systems. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate experimentally a novel view of hearing, where active hearing emerges from a deep interplay between adaptive sensory processes and goal-directed cognition. Specifically, we shall explore the postulate that versatile perception is mediated by rapid-plasticity at the neuronal level. At the conjunction of sensory and cognitive processing, rapid-plasticity pervades all levels of auditory system, from the cochlea up to the auditory and prefrontal cortices. Exploiting fundamental statistical regularities of acoustics, it is what allows humans and other animal to deal so successfully with natural acoustic scenes where artificial systems fail. The project builds on the internationally recognized leadership of the PI in the fields of physiology and computational modeling, combined with the expertise of the Co-Investigator in psychophysics. Building on these highly complementary fields and several technical innovations, we hope to promote a novel view of auditory perception and cognition. We aim also to contribute significantly to translational research in the domain of signal processing for clinical hearing aids, given that many current limitations are not technological but rather conceptual. The project will finally result in the creation of laboratory facilities and an intellectual network unique in France and rare in all of Europe, combining cognitive, neural, and computational approaches to auditory neuroscience.
Max ERC Funding
3 199 078 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30
Project acronym ADDICTION
Project Beyond the Genetics of Addiction
Researcher (PI) Jacqueline Mignon Vink
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2011-StG_20101124
Summary My proposal seeks to explain the complex interplay between genetic and environmental causes of individual variation in substance use and the risk for abuse. Substance use is common. Substances like nicotine and cannabis have well-known negative health consequences, while alcohol and caffeine use may be both beneficial and detrimental, depending on quantity and frequency of use. Twin studies (including my own) demonstrated that both heritable and environmental factors play a role.
My proposal on substance use (nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and caffeine) is organized around several key objectives: 1. To unravel the complex contribution of genetic and environmental factors to substance use by using extended twin family designs; 2. To identify and confirm genes and gene networks involved in substance use by using DNA-variant data; 3. To explore gene expression patterns with RNA data in substance users versus non-users; 4. To investigate biomarkers in substance users versus non-users using blood or urine; 5. To unravel relation between substance use and health by linking twin-family data to national medical databases.
To realize these aims I will use the extensive resources of the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR); including both the longitudinal phenotype database and the biological samples. I have been involved in data collection, coordination of data collection and analyzing NTR data since 1999. With my comprehensive experience in data collection, data analyses and my knowledge in the field of behavior genetics and addiction research I will be able to successfully lead this cutting-edge project. Additional data crucial for the project will be collected by my team. Large samples will be available for this study and state-of-the art methods will be used to analyze the data. All together, my project will offer powerful approaches to unravel the complex interaction between genetic and environmental causes of individual differences in substance use and the risk for abuse.
Summary
My proposal seeks to explain the complex interplay between genetic and environmental causes of individual variation in substance use and the risk for abuse. Substance use is common. Substances like nicotine and cannabis have well-known negative health consequences, while alcohol and caffeine use may be both beneficial and detrimental, depending on quantity and frequency of use. Twin studies (including my own) demonstrated that both heritable and environmental factors play a role.
My proposal on substance use (nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and caffeine) is organized around several key objectives: 1. To unravel the complex contribution of genetic and environmental factors to substance use by using extended twin family designs; 2. To identify and confirm genes and gene networks involved in substance use by using DNA-variant data; 3. To explore gene expression patterns with RNA data in substance users versus non-users; 4. To investigate biomarkers in substance users versus non-users using blood or urine; 5. To unravel relation between substance use and health by linking twin-family data to national medical databases.
To realize these aims I will use the extensive resources of the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR); including both the longitudinal phenotype database and the biological samples. I have been involved in data collection, coordination of data collection and analyzing NTR data since 1999. With my comprehensive experience in data collection, data analyses and my knowledge in the field of behavior genetics and addiction research I will be able to successfully lead this cutting-edge project. Additional data crucial for the project will be collected by my team. Large samples will be available for this study and state-of-the art methods will be used to analyze the data. All together, my project will offer powerful approaches to unravel the complex interaction between genetic and environmental causes of individual differences in substance use and the risk for abuse.
Max ERC Funding
1 491 964 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-12-01, End date: 2017-05-31
Project acronym AFDMATS
Project Anton Francesco Doni – Multimedia Archive Texts and Sources
Researcher (PI) Giovanna Rizzarelli
Host Institution (HI) SCUOLA NORMALE SUPERIORE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2007-StG
Summary This project aims at creating a multimedia archive of the printed works of Anton Francesco Doni, who was not only an author but also a typographer, a publisher and a member of the Giolito and Marcolini’s editorial staff. The analysis of Doni’s work may be a good way to investigate appropriation, text rewriting and image reusing practices which are typical of several authors of the 16th Century, as clearly shown by the critics in the last decades. This project intends to bring to light the wide range of impulses from which Doni’s texts are generated, with a great emphasis on the figurative aspect. The encoding of these texts will be carried out using the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) guidelines, which will enable any single text to interact with a range of intertextual references both at a local level (inside the same text) and at a macrostructural level (references to other texts by Doni or to other authors). The elements that will emerge from the textual encoding concern: A) The use of images Real images: the complex relation between Doni’s writing and the xylographies available in Marcolini’s printing-house or belonging to other collections. Mental images: the remarkable presence of verbal images, as descriptions, ekphràseis, figurative visions, dreams and iconographic allusions not accompanied by illustrations, but related to a recognizable visual repertoire or to real images that will be reproduced. B) The use of sources A parallel archive of the texts most used by Doni will be created. Digital anastatic reproductions of the 16th-Century editions known by Doni will be provided whenever available. The various forms of intertextuality will be divided into the following typologies: allusions; citations; rewritings; plagiarisms; self-quotations. Finally, the different forms of narrative (tales, short stories, anecdotes, lyrics) and the different idiomatic expressions (proverbial forms and wellerisms) will also be encoded.
Summary
This project aims at creating a multimedia archive of the printed works of Anton Francesco Doni, who was not only an author but also a typographer, a publisher and a member of the Giolito and Marcolini’s editorial staff. The analysis of Doni’s work may be a good way to investigate appropriation, text rewriting and image reusing practices which are typical of several authors of the 16th Century, as clearly shown by the critics in the last decades. This project intends to bring to light the wide range of impulses from which Doni’s texts are generated, with a great emphasis on the figurative aspect. The encoding of these texts will be carried out using the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) guidelines, which will enable any single text to interact with a range of intertextual references both at a local level (inside the same text) and at a macrostructural level (references to other texts by Doni or to other authors). The elements that will emerge from the textual encoding concern: A) The use of images Real images: the complex relation between Doni’s writing and the xylographies available in Marcolini’s printing-house or belonging to other collections. Mental images: the remarkable presence of verbal images, as descriptions, ekphràseis, figurative visions, dreams and iconographic allusions not accompanied by illustrations, but related to a recognizable visual repertoire or to real images that will be reproduced. B) The use of sources A parallel archive of the texts most used by Doni will be created. Digital anastatic reproductions of the 16th-Century editions known by Doni will be provided whenever available. The various forms of intertextuality will be divided into the following typologies: allusions; citations; rewritings; plagiarisms; self-quotations. Finally, the different forms of narrative (tales, short stories, anecdotes, lyrics) and the different idiomatic expressions (proverbial forms and wellerisms) will also be encoded.
Max ERC Funding
559 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2008-08-01, End date: 2012-07-31
Project acronym AFFORDS-HIGHER
Project Skilled Intentionality for 'Higher' Embodied Cognition: Joining forces with a field of affordances in flux
Researcher (PI) Dirk Willem Rietveld
Host Institution (HI) ACADEMISCH MEDISCH CENTRUM BIJ DE UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2015-STG
Summary In many situations experts act adequately, yet without deliberation. Architects e.g, immediately sense opportunities offered by the site of a new project. One could label these manifestations of expert intuition as ‘higher-level’ cognition, but still these experts act unreflectively. The aim of my project is to develop the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF), a new conceptual framework for the field of embodied/enactive cognitive science (Chemero, 2009; Thompson, 2007). I argue that affordances - possibilities for action provided by our surroundings - are highly significant in cases of unreflective and reflective ‘higher’ cognition. Skilled Intentionality is skilled coordination with multiple affordances simultaneously.
The two central ideas behind this proposal are (a) that episodes of skilled ‘higher’ cognition can be understood as responsiveness to affordances for ‘higher’ cognition and (b) that our surroundings are highly resourceful and contribute to skillful action and cognition in a far more fundamental way than is generally acknowledged. I use embedded philosophical research in a particular practice of architecture to shed new light on the ways in which affordances for ‘higher’ cognition support creative imagination, anticipation, explicit planning and self-reflection.
The Skilled Intentionality Framework is groundbreaking in relating findings established at several complementary levels of analysis: philosophy/phenomenology, ecological psychology, affective science and neurodynamics.
Empirical findings thought to be exclusively valid for everyday unreflective action can now be used to explain skilled ‘higher’ cognition as well. Moreover, SIF brings both the context and the social back into cognitive science. I will show SIF’s relevance for Friston’s work on the anticipating brain, and apply it in the domain of architecture and public health. SIF will radically widen the scope of the increasingly influential field of embodied cognitive science.
Summary
In many situations experts act adequately, yet without deliberation. Architects e.g, immediately sense opportunities offered by the site of a new project. One could label these manifestations of expert intuition as ‘higher-level’ cognition, but still these experts act unreflectively. The aim of my project is to develop the Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF), a new conceptual framework for the field of embodied/enactive cognitive science (Chemero, 2009; Thompson, 2007). I argue that affordances - possibilities for action provided by our surroundings - are highly significant in cases of unreflective and reflective ‘higher’ cognition. Skilled Intentionality is skilled coordination with multiple affordances simultaneously.
The two central ideas behind this proposal are (a) that episodes of skilled ‘higher’ cognition can be understood as responsiveness to affordances for ‘higher’ cognition and (b) that our surroundings are highly resourceful and contribute to skillful action and cognition in a far more fundamental way than is generally acknowledged. I use embedded philosophical research in a particular practice of architecture to shed new light on the ways in which affordances for ‘higher’ cognition support creative imagination, anticipation, explicit planning and self-reflection.
The Skilled Intentionality Framework is groundbreaking in relating findings established at several complementary levels of analysis: philosophy/phenomenology, ecological psychology, affective science and neurodynamics.
Empirical findings thought to be exclusively valid for everyday unreflective action can now be used to explain skilled ‘higher’ cognition as well. Moreover, SIF brings both the context and the social back into cognitive science. I will show SIF’s relevance for Friston’s work on the anticipating brain, and apply it in the domain of architecture and public health. SIF will radically widen the scope of the increasingly influential field of embodied cognitive science.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 850 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-05-01, End date: 2021-04-30
Project acronym AgeConsolidate
Project The Missing Link of Episodic Memory Decline in Aging: The Role of Inefficient Systems Consolidation
Researcher (PI) Anders Martin FJELL
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Which brain mechanisms are responsible for the faith of the memories we make with age, whether they wither or stay, and in what form? Episodic memory function does decline with age. While this decline can have multiple causes, research has focused almost entirely on encoding and retrieval processes, largely ignoring a third critical process– consolidation. The objective of AgeConsolidate is to provide this missing link, by combining novel experimental cognitive paradigms with neuroimaging in a longitudinal large-scale attempt to directly test how age-related changes in consolidation processes in the brain impact episodic memory decline. The ambitious aims of the present proposal are two-fold:
(1) Use recent advances in memory consolidation theory to achieve an elaborate model of episodic memory deficits in aging
(2) Use aging as a model to uncover how structural and functional brain changes affect episodic memory consolidation in general
The novelty of the project lies in the synthesis of recent methodological advances and theoretical models for episodic memory consolidation to explain age-related decline, by employing a unique combination of a range of different techniques and approaches. This is ground-breaking, in that it aims at taking our understanding of the brain processes underlying episodic memory decline in aging to a new level, while at the same time advancing our theoretical understanding of how episodic memories are consolidated in the human brain. To obtain this outcome, I will test the main hypothesis of the project: Brain processes of episodic memory consolidation are less effective in older adults, and this can account for a significant portion of the episodic memory decline in aging. This will be answered by six secondary hypotheses, with 1-3 experiments or tasks designated to address each hypothesis, focusing on functional and structural MRI, positron emission tomography data and sleep experiments to target consolidation from different angles.
Summary
Which brain mechanisms are responsible for the faith of the memories we make with age, whether they wither or stay, and in what form? Episodic memory function does decline with age. While this decline can have multiple causes, research has focused almost entirely on encoding and retrieval processes, largely ignoring a third critical process– consolidation. The objective of AgeConsolidate is to provide this missing link, by combining novel experimental cognitive paradigms with neuroimaging in a longitudinal large-scale attempt to directly test how age-related changes in consolidation processes in the brain impact episodic memory decline. The ambitious aims of the present proposal are two-fold:
(1) Use recent advances in memory consolidation theory to achieve an elaborate model of episodic memory deficits in aging
(2) Use aging as a model to uncover how structural and functional brain changes affect episodic memory consolidation in general
The novelty of the project lies in the synthesis of recent methodological advances and theoretical models for episodic memory consolidation to explain age-related decline, by employing a unique combination of a range of different techniques and approaches. This is ground-breaking, in that it aims at taking our understanding of the brain processes underlying episodic memory decline in aging to a new level, while at the same time advancing our theoretical understanding of how episodic memories are consolidated in the human brain. To obtain this outcome, I will test the main hypothesis of the project: Brain processes of episodic memory consolidation are less effective in older adults, and this can account for a significant portion of the episodic memory decline in aging. This will be answered by six secondary hypotheses, with 1-3 experiments or tasks designated to address each hypothesis, focusing on functional and structural MRI, positron emission tomography data and sleep experiments to target consolidation from different angles.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 482 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30
