HMWK approves joint cluster project "The Adaptive Mind" (TAM) of the Universities of Giessen and Marburg and TU Darmstadt under JLU leadership.

The Hessian Ministry of Science and Art approves the joint cluster project "The Adaptive Mind" (TAM) of the Universities of Giessen and Marburg and TU Darmstadt under JLU leadership, with Prof. Dr. Karl Gegenfurtner as the applicant partner for JLU. In an interdisciplinary research team from psychology, psychiatry, sports science, physics and computer science, the tension between stability and change will be investigated. The collaborative project will be funded with a total of 7.4 million euros over the next four years, starting in April 2021.

More information can be found here.

Many aspects of human color perception are well studied, but are based on narrowly defined laboratory studies. Color3.0 investigates how the perception of color works in real life, and how the brain processes it. What happens when we look at a field full of flowers or search for a specific product at the supermarket? Color3.0 focuses on the most important function of color - namely to provide information about natural objects that are three-dimensional and embedded in their natural environments.

he key goal of the International Research Training Group (IRTG) The Brain in Action – BrainAct is to deepen our understanding of the neural systems and processes that underlie perception and action in everyday living. German and Canadian partners with longstanding and internationally renowned expertise in systems neuroscience will join forces to combine top-level interdisciplinary research with state-of-the-art training of doctoral candidates.

The Special Research Area aims to understand how the human brain extracts meaning from these basic sensory signals. Here we propose to understand perception in terms of a set of three underlying principles: prediction, valuation, and categorization. The brain is the organ that continuously optimizes these internal models, enabling us to predict the future state of the environment and the consequences of actions, evaluate the potential risks and benefits of different stimuli and responses, and categorize a complex continuous world into discrete mental concepts and behaviors.

More information can be found here.