Willkommen zur TeaP 2006 in Mainz!

Artists have been the pioneers of visual science for 40,000 years, discovering techniques of representation that provide compelling impressions of surfaces, light, and objects.  Many rules of physics that apply in a real scene are, however, optional in a painting; they can be applied or ignored at the discretion of the artist in order to further the painting’s intended effect.
Transgressions of standard physics such as impossible shadows, colors, reflections, or contours are often not noticed by the viewer and this allows artists to take shortcuts. As artists discover these shortcuts, bending the laws of physics without penalty, they act as research neuroscientists and much can be learned from tracking down their discoveries. The goal is not to expose the “slip-ups” of the masters, entertaining as that might be, but to understand the reduced set of rules that the brain uses to comprehend the world.
(Prof. Patrick Cavanagh , Vision Sciences Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University)

 
In executing a speeded movement, there is uncertainty due to motor variability and, the more rapidly the subject moves, the greater the uncertainty.  I’ll present a model of ideal movement planning (1) that takes into account the subject’s own motor uncertainty in planning movement. The model is a natural translation of movement planning into Bayesian decision theory. I’ll then present a series of experiments in which subjects played simple economic games where all possible outcomes of the movement incurred monetary rewards or penalties. In these games, subjects attempted to touch small, briefly-presented targets to earn monetary rewards while avoiding nearby penalty regions. We tested experimentally whether subjects compensate for their own motor uncertainty in planning such movements. In a recent experiment, for example, subjects attempted to touch small targets that abruptly appeared on a screen in front of them.  If they touched a target, they earned money but the amount of money earned decreased rapidly over time. If they moved too quickly, they would likely miss the target, too slowly, they would hit it but earn little reward.  The problem for the subject is to base their choice of movement plan on their own speed-accuracy tradeoff. In this task and others I will describe, subjects’ performance is close to the performance that maximizes expected gain as predicted by the model. 
(Trommershäuser, J., Maloney, L. T. & Landy, M. S. (2003), Spatial Vision, 16, 255-275.)
Support: NIH EY08266; HFSP RG0109/1999-B.

In specific regions of frontal and parietal cortex, neuroimaging shows a pattern of multiple-demand (MD) activity - increased activation associated with many different cognitive demands.  In the frontal lobe, MD activity is seen in and around the inferior frontal sulcus, in the frontal operculum/anterior insula, and in the anterior cingulate/supplementary motor area.
Similar activity is also seen along the intraparietal sulcus.  I suggest that MD regions constitute a flexible working memory, constructing and holding together the facts, rules and requirements bearing on current behaviour.
While many accounts of prefrontal function depend on complex executive processes, we find strong activation of MD regions simply associated with new, attended visual events requiring no decision or response.   Single cell studies in the behaving monkey, both in our laboratory and many others, show how prefrontal cells are selectively tuned to information of current task relevance.  A striking finding is correct response even when behaviour is in error - as though prefrontal cells obey task rules even when the animal itself does not.  Finally I describe experiments on "goal neglect", or behaviour in violation of known task requirements.  Sometimes reported in frontal patients, goal neglect is also seen in ordinary people as task complexity increases.  It is strongly associated with low intelligence test scores. I suggest that, when many task components compete for MD representation, vulnerable parts lose salience and fail in their control of behaviour.
(Prof. John Duncan , MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University)

Menschliches Verhalten wird als gemeinsame Funktion reflektiver und impulsiver Prozesse verstanden, die von zwei interagierenden Systemen kontrolliert werden und auf unterschiedlichen Operationsprinzipien basieren.
Während das „Reflektive System“ wissensbasierte Verhaltensentscheidungen generiert löst das „Impulsive System“ Verhalten durch assoziative Verknüpfungen und motivationale Orientierungen aus.
Das vorliegende Reflektiv-Impulsiv-Modell (RIM) beschreibt, wie die beiden Systeme in unterschiedlichen Stadien der Informationsverarbeitung zusammenwirken unddie Exekution des Verhaltens in synergistischer oder antagonistischer Weise
beeinflussen. Das RIM hat den Anspruch, kognitive, motivationale und Verhaltensmechanismen zu integrieren und so zur Erklärung einer Vielzahl von Phänomenen aus der Psychologie und der Psychopathologie beizutragen.