ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

If you suddenly hear your song on the radio and spontaneously decide to burst into dance in your living room, you need to precisely time your movements if you do not want to find yourself on your bookshelf. Most of what we do or perceive depends on how accurately we represent the temporal properties of the environment however we cannot see or touch time. As such, time in the millisecond range is both a fundamental and elusive dimension of everyday experiences. Despite the obvious importance of time to information processing and to behavior in general, little is known yet about how the human brain process time. Existing approaches to the study of the neural mechanisms of time mainly focus on the identification of brain regions involved in temporal computations (‘where’ time is processed in the brain), whereas most computational models vary in their biological plausibility and do not always make clear testable predictions. BiT is a groundbreaking research program designed to challenge current models of time perception and to offer a new perspective in the study of the neural basis of time. The groundbreaking nature of BiT derives from the novelty of the questions asked (‘when’ and ‘how’ time is processed in the brain) and from addressing them using complementary but distinct research approaches (from human neuroimaging to brain stimulation techniques, from the investigation of the whole brain to the focus on specific brain regions). By testing a new biologically plausible hypothesis of temporal representation (via duration tuning and ‘chronotopy’) and by scrutinizing the functional properties and, for the first time, the temporal hierarchies of ‘putative’ time regions, BiT will offer a multifaceted knowledge of how the human brain represents time. This new knowledge will challenge our understanding of brain organization and function that typically lacks of a time angle and will impact our understanding of how the brain uses time information for perception and action

1 670 830 €

Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30

The ability to construct new meanings by combining words into larger constituents is one of the fundamental and peculiarly human characteristics of language. Systems that induce the meaning and combinatorial properties of linguistic symbols from data are highly desirable both from a theoretical perspective (modeling a core aspect of cognition) and for practical purposes (supporting human-computer interaction). COMPOSES tackles the meaning induction and composition problem from a new perspective that brings together corpus-based distributional semantics (that is very successful at inducing the meaning of single content words, but ignores functional elements and compositionality) and formal semantics (that focuses on functional elements and composition, but largely ignores lexical aspects of meaning and lacks methods to learn the proposed structures from data). As in distributional semantics, we represent some content words (such as nouns) by vectors recording their corpus contexts. Implementing instead ideas from formal semantics, functional elements (such as determiners) are represented by functions mapping from expressions of one type onto composite expressions of the same or other types. These composition functions are induced from corpus data by statistical learning of mappings from observed context vectors of input arguments to observed context vectors of composite structures. We model a number of compositional processes in this way, developing a coherent fragment of the semantics of English in a data-driven, large-scale fashion. Given the novelty of the approach, we also propose new evaluation frameworks: On the one hand, we take inspiration from cognitive science and experimental linguistics to design elicitation methods measuring the perceived similarity and plausibility of sentences. On the other, specialized entailment tests will assess the semantic inference properties of our corpus-induced system.

1 117 636 €

Start date: 2011-11-01, End date: 2016-10-31

The study of semantic memory considers a broad range of knowledge extending from basic elemental concepts that allow us to recognise and understand objects like ‘an apple’, to elaborated semantic information such as knowing when it is appropriate to use a Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test. Such elaborated semantic knowledge is fundamental to our daily lives yet our understanding of the neural substrates is minimal. The objective of CRASK is to advance rapidly beyond the state-of-the-art to address this issue. CRASK will begin by building a fundamental understanding of regional contributions, hierarchical organisation and regional coordination to form a predictive systems model of semantic representation in the brain. This will be accomplished through convergent evidence from an innovative combination of fine cognitive manipulations, multimodal imaging techniques (fMRI, MEG), and advanced analytical approaches (multivariate analysis of response patterns, representational similarity analysis, functional connectivity). Progress will proceed in stages. First the systems-level network underlying our knowledge of other people will be determined. Once this is accomplished CRASK will investigate general semantic knowledge in terms of the relative contribution of canonical, feature-selective and category-selective semantic representations and their respective roles in automatic and effortful semantic access. The systems-level model of semantic representation will be used to predict and test how the brain manifests elaborated semantic knowledge. The resulting understanding of the neural substrates of elaborated semantic knowledge will open up new areas of research. In the final stage of CRASK we chart this territory in terms of human factors: understanding the role of the representational semantic system in transient failures in access, neural factors that lead to optimal encoding and retrieval and the effects of ageing on the system.

1 472 502 €

Start date: 2015-05-01, End date: 2020-04-30

Recent research has shown that genetic variations in central serotonin function are associated with biases in emotional information processing (heightened attention to signals of negative emotion) and that these biases contribute significantly to vulnerability to affective disorders. Here, we propose to examine a novel hypothesis that the biases in attention to emotional cues are ontogenetically primary, arise very early in development, and modulate an individual’s interaction with the environment during development. The four specific aims of the project are to 1) test the hypothesis that developmental processes resulting in increased functional connectivity of visual and emotion/attention-related neural systems (i.e., increased phase-synchrony of oscillatory activity) from 5 to 7 months of age are associated with the emergence of an overt attentional bias towards affectively salient facial expressions at 7 months of age, 2) use eye-tracking to ascertain that the attentional bias in 7-month-old infants reflects sensitivity to the emotional signal value of facial expressions instead of correlated non-emotional features, 3) test the hypothesis that increased serotonergic tone early in life (through genetic polymorphisms or exposure to serotonin enhancing drugs) is associated with reduced control of attention to affectively salient facial expressions and reduced temperamental emotion-regulation at 7, 24 and 48 months of age, and 4) examine the plasticity of the attentional bias towards emotional facial expressions in infancy, particularly whether the bias can be overridden by using positive reinforcers. The proposed studies will be the first to explicate the neural bases and nature of early-emerging cognitive deficits and biases that pose a risk for emotional dysfunction. As such, the results will be very important for developing intervention methods that benefit of the plasticity of the developing brain and skill formation to support healthy development.

1 397 351 €

Start date: 2012-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31

Every day, everywhere, people make unethical choices ranging from minor selfish lies to massive frauds, with dramatic individual and societal costs. Embodied cognition theories posit that even seemingly abstract processes (like grammar) may be biased by the body-related signals used for building and maintaining self-consciousness, the fundamental experience of owning a body (ownership) and being the author of an action (agency), that is at the basis of self-other distinction. Applying this framework to morality, we hypothesize that strengthening or weakening participants’ bodily self-consciousness towards virtual avatars or real others will influence dishonesty in real, virtual, and web-based interactions. To test this hypothesis, we will measure: i) individual dishonesty after modifying body ownership (e.g., by changing the appearance of the virtual body) and agency (e.g., by changing the temporal synchrony between participant’s and avatar’s actions) over an avatar through which decisions are made; ii) intergroup dishonesty after inducing inter-individual sharing of body self-consciousness (e.g., blur self-other distinction via facial visuo-tactile stimulation); iii) individual and intergroup dishonesty by manipulating exteroceptive (e.g., the external features of a virtual body) or interoceptive (e.g., changing the degree of synchronicity between participant’s and avatar/real person’s breathing rhythm) bodily inputs. Dishonesty will be assessed through novel ecological tasks based on virtual reality and web-based interactions. Behavioural (e.g., subjective reports, kinematics), autonomic (e.g., heartbeat, thermal imaging) and brain (e.g., EEG, TMS, lesion analyses) measures of dishonesty will be recorded in healthy and clinical populations. Our person-based, embodied approach to dishonesty complements cross-cultural, large-scale, societal investigations and may inspire new strategies for contrasting dishonesty and other unethical behaviours.

2 497 188 €

Start date: 2018-11-01, End date: 2023-10-31

Intractable conflicts are one of the gravest challenges to both humanity and science. These conflicts are initiated and perpetuated by people; therefore changing people's hearts and minds constitutes a huge step towards resolution. Research on emotions in conflicts has led to the realization that intergroup emotions are critical to conflict dynamics. This project’s intrinsic question is whether and how intergroup emotions can be regulated to alter attitudes and behavior towards peace. I offer an innovative path, using two strategies of emotion regulation. The first is Direct Emotion Regulation, where traditional, effective emotion regulation strategies can be used to change intergroup emotional experiences and subsequently political positions in conflict situations. The second, Indirect Emotion Regulation, serves to implicitly alter concrete cognitive appraisals, thus changing attitudes by changing discrete emotions. This is the first attempt ever to integrate psychological aggregated knowledge on emotion regulation with conflict resolution. I propose 16 studies, conducted in the context of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Seven studies will focus on direct emotion regulation, reducing intergroup anger and hatred, while 9 studies will focus on indirect regulation, aspiring to reduce fear and despair. In both paths, correlational and in-lab experimental studies will be used to refine adequate strategies of down regulating destructive emotions, the results of which will be used to develop innovative, theory-driven education and media interventions that will be tested utilizing wide scale experience sampling methodology. This project aspires to bridge the gap between basic and applied science, creating a pioneering, interdisciplinary framework which contributes to existing knowledge on emotion regulation in conflict and implements ways to apply it in real-world circumstances.

1 499 344 €

Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31

The role of children's behavior and temperament is increasingly acknowledged in family research. Gene-environment Correlation (rGE) processes may account for some child effects, as parents react to children s behavior which is in part genetically influenced (evocative rGE). In addition, passive rGE, in which parenting and children s behavior are correlated through overlapping genetic influences on family members behavior may account in part for the parenting-child behavior relationships. The proposed project will be the first one to directly address these issues with DNA information on family members and quality observational data on parent and child behaviors, following children through early development. Two separate longitudinal studies will investigate the paths from children s genes to their behavior, to the way parents react and modify their parenting towards the child, affecting child development: Study 1 will follow first-time parents from pregnancy through children s early childhood, decoupling parent effect and child effects. Study 2 will follow dizygotic twins and their parents through middle childhood, capitalizing on genetic differences between twins reared by the same parents. We will test the hypothesis that parents' characteristics, such as parenting style and parental attitudes, are associated with children's genetic tendencies. Both parenting and child behaviors will be monitored consecutively, to investigate the co-development of parents and children in an evocative rGE process. Child and parent candidate genes relevant to social behavior, notably those from the dompaminergic and serotonergic systems, will be linked to parents behaviors. Pilot results show children s genes predict parenting, and an important task for the study will be to identify mediators of this effect, such as children s temperament. We will lay the ground for further research into the complexity of gene-environment correlations as children and parents co-develop.

1 443 687 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31

Research in logic and foundations of mathematics received an enormous impact through the incompleteness theorems that Kurt Gödel published in 1931. They are among the most iconic scientific achievements of the 20th century. These results led to the development of true formal systems and to the notions of formal languages and algorithmic computability that are connected to such names as Alonzo Church and Alan Turing. The said notions are the direct basis on which the first programming languages and computers were built two decades later. Thus, the present information society owes a - well hidden - debt to the theoretically oriented foundational research that sprung off from Gödel's results. Strangely enough, there are several thousand pages of notes by this foremost figure of logic that have remained almost completely untouched. Such a situation would be unthinkable in many other fields. Say, with modern physics, every effort would have been made if Einstein - even Gödel's colleague and friend at the Princeton Institute - had left behind such a patrimony! With Gödel, the difficulty lies in part in the fact that the work is written down in an obsolete, forgotten old German stenographic script called Gabelsberger, a true enigma for those interested in the contents. A second difficulty is the intrinsic logical complexity of the work. The central aim of the project is to make this work available to future generations of logicians and philosophers. The principal investigator is in a unique position of being able to read the Gabelsberger notes and to interpret their logical content: What they mean in a historical-foundational context, what their significance is for today's research problems in logic, and how they change the view of Gödel as one of the most original thinkers of a century.

2 132 993 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

The pioneering framework I propose for the analysis of the foundations of human language – the Grammar of the Body – is inspired by sign language. My main aim is to create a body-based model of linguistic compositionality and to provide clues of its evolutionary origins. Instead of analysing sign language (and language generally) from the perspective of mental categories, the radical approach I introduce here analyses language from the outside in, from the physical articulators of the face, hands, and body in sign language, to the grammatical structures they manifest. This new approach capitalizes on the discovery that gestures of each articulator make a meaningful contribution to the whole corporeal display, and yield a hierarchy from small to large in both body and grammar domains: hands/words > head and face/phrasal intonation > torso/discourse perspective. I hypothesize that the corporeal base of compositionality has deeper evolutionary roots in the emotional face and body displays of humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. The multi-disciplinary methodology I adopt will incorporate linguistic analysis of established and newly emerging sign languages with artistic manipulation of language form, and allow us to trace the origins of the system in emotional displays of both humans and apes. My central goal – determining the basis and structure of compositionality in human language – and the unconventional methodological approaches it exploits combine to make this an extremely ambitious proposal with potentially wide-reaching ramifications in the humanities and social sciences.

2 448 318 €

Start date: 2014-07-01, End date: 2019-06-30