BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Our research
The main focus of our research is to study the neural mechanisms of the processing of action consequences in humans. First of all, each action has perceptual consequences that we need to take into account in our perception.
As an example, think about tickling yourself. Compared to being tickled by someone else the tickle sensation is much reduced, because your perceptual system predicts the sensations caused by your own action. In one line of research we study these prediction processes, which also play a role in eye movements. At the same time, our actions can be right or wrong and can lead to positive or negative outcomes, e.g. in terms of monetary gains or losses. In this context, learning plays an important role. We study the mechanisms by which humans can learn to choose actions with positive consequences over those with negative consequences. Related areas of interest are the similarities and differences between active and observational learning and the role of action experience for object representations in semantic memory.