CONNECTS

Cognitive and Neural Computations of Semantics

In our everyday lives, we rely on existing relations among elements in our environment (i.e., semantic information) to interact efficiently with the world. This information can either be used to facilitate understanding by exploiting redundant (congruent) evidence or to signal out salient stimuli by highlighting unexpected (incongruent) elements. This duality raises fundamental questions about when and how our brains utilise stored semantic knowledge as its influence often differs by cognitive domain. 

This seemingly paradoxical state represents a cognitive puzzle that questions whether the presence of (in)congruent contextual information in a given situation has a positive or negative impact on how we perceive, process, and remember information. CONNECTS seeks to solve this paradox with a multi-method approach, including behavioural, neural (fMRI and EEG), and computational data from artificial neural networks. Stay tuned to see how it goes!