Research Interests

Understanding how cognition emerges in nervous systems is the over-arching goal of the ”embodied cognition” research group headed by Gregor Schöner. The foundations of our understanding of cognition are reexamined by taking into account the linkage of cognitive processes to the sensory and motor surfaces, the embedding of organisms in highly-structured and specific environments as well as the neural basis of cognitive processing.
The group is primarily contributing theory, both at a conceptual level and through mathematical modeling using ideas in neural dynamics, including Dynamic Field Theory. A number of close theory-experiment collaborations are each centered around an exemplary model system. These collaborations span a diverse array of fields including motor control, movement planning, spatial and visual memory, the perception of motion, and the development of motor and perceptual representations. Overlap with the autonomous robotics group at the Institut für Neuroinformatik is used to explore through robotic implementations of the models the sufficiency, robustness, and scalability of our theoretical conceptions.