XPrag.de Principal Investigator Friedemann Pulverm\u00fcller from project “BraiSiCo” at Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin receives 2.5 million euros from the European Research Council to explore the mechanisms underlying specifically human cognitive capacities. His project “MatCo – Material Constraints Enabling Human Cognition” will use novel insights from human neurobiology translated into mathematically exact computational models to find new answers to long-standing questions in cognitive science, linguistics and philosophy. Models replicating structural differences between human and non-human primate brains will help delineate mechanisms underlying specifically human cognitive capacities. Key experiments will validate critical model predictions and new neurophysiological data will be applied to further improve the biologically-constrained networks. <\/p>\n
This novel research pathway offers biologically well-founded and computationally precise perspectives on addressing exciting hitherto unanswered fundamental questions, such as the following: How can humans build vocabularies of tens and hundreds of thousands of words, whereas our closest evolutionary relatives typically use below 100? How is semantic meaning implemented for gestures and words, and, more specifically, for referential and categorical terms? How can grounding and interpretability of abstract symbols be anchored biologically? Which features of connectivity between nerve cells are crucial for the formation of discrete representations and categorical combination? Would modelling of cognitive functions using brain-constrained networks allow for better predictions on brain activity indexing the processing of signs and their meaning? <\/p>\n
Link to the webpage of Friedemann Pulverm\u00fcller’s Brain Language Laboratory!<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" XPrag.de Principal Investigator Friedemann Pulverm\u00fcller from project “BraiSiCo” at Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin receives 2.5 million euros from the European Research Council to explore the mechanisms underlying specifically human cognitive capacities. His project “MatCo – Material Constraints Enabling Human Cognition” will use novel insights from human neurobiology translated into mathematically exact computational models to find new … Continue reading Friedemann Pulverm\u00fcller from project BraiSiCo awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to explore the mechanisms underlying specifically human cognitive capacities<\/span>