FOR 2293:  Active Perception

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences ; Medicine
• Term: from 2015 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 263727500

In contrast to traditional approaches to perception, “Active Perception” implies that perceptual processing does not simply lead to action, but is itself influenced by action-related processing – in a continuous exchange with the environment, involving adaptation to the statistical regularities in the environment (‘priors’). In the past two decades, there have been several new developments in the conceptualization of perception (to which we have contributed significantly): (i) causal influence of action on perception, (ii) predictive coding, (iii) ‘situatedness’ of the agent, and (iv) ‘utility’ of an action (alternative) given the state of the external world. The thrust of the proposed, multidisciplinary DFG research unit “Active Perception” (RU-AP) is to integrate these developments, which have hitherto been treated largely separately, into a coherent, unifying framework. Particular strands of work to be pursued within this framework encompass the whole perception-cognition-action loop, in particular: predictive, memory-based effects in visual processing (e.g., dimension weighting, contextual cueing, intentional binding; dynamic allocation of attention, and anticipatory receptive-field re-mapping, prior to saccadic eye movements and manual (e.g., grasping) actions; multi-modal perception and action; and the mathematical modelling of predictive perceptual processing. The N=11 individual projects are ‘truely’ interdisciplinary by design, with contributions from Experimental P., Biological P., Developmental P., Neuro-P., Neurology, Neuropsychiatry, and Mathematics, and use a variety of neuroscience techniques, besides behavioral approaches: EEG, fMRI, TMS, neuropsychological assessment – thus fostering an integration of the neuroscientic and cognitive perspectives in research on “Active Perception”. The planned research also includes foci on developmental (normal vs. pathological aging) of the functions under consideration, with areas of application in advanced diagnostics in neurology / psychiatry as well as technical applications (e.g., BCI, social robotics).

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• B1. The construction of attentional templates in cross-modal pop-out search (Applicant Shi, Zhuanghua )
• B3 - Interozeptive Vorhersagen: neurokognitive Mechanismen, Determinanten und Funktionen (Applicant Schütz-Bosbach, Simone )
• Bayesian modelling of hierarchical prior and its updating mechanisms: contextual modulation by cognitive load and sequential dependence (Applicants Glasauer, Stefan ;  Shi, Zhuanghua )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Müller, Hermann J. )
• Modeling inter-trial dynamics in visual search: developing a hierarchical predictive-coding framework of response decisions in a variety of search tasks (Applicant Müller, Hermann J. )
• Modulating visual and sensorimotor biases for attention (Applicant Taylor, Paul )
• Predictive enhancement and inhibition in the context of actions (Applicant Deubel, Heiner )
• Project A3. Learning and adaptation of spatial attention templates in visual search (Applicant Geyer, Thomas )
• Project B2. Neural signatures of mental templates in visual search (Applicant Sauseng, Paul )
• Project C1. Aging and the effect of predictivity and utility on perception (Applicants Finke, Kathrin ;  Sorg, Christian )
• Project C2. Space and action: the different meanings and uses of 'active perception' (Applicant Schenk, Thomas )
• The development of active action anticipation: Children’s anticipation of others’ goals (Applicant Paulus, Markus )
• Understanding visual-working-memory encoding as a visual search for multiple targets (Applicant Liesefeld, Heinrich René )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Hermann J. Müller