Research areas
The research in the brain and mind area is conducted on
several fronts:
Basic neurobiology
The philosophy of consciousness
Clinical neurobiological research
Cognitive psychology
Machines that think – robots that see
Psychiatric research
Basic neurobiology
- the physical basis of information processing in the
brain
The brain receives, processes and passes on information.
These operations are performed by chemical and electrical
signalling in and between nerve cells. Elucidation of the
signalling processes in neural networks is therefore the
basis for being able to understand the physical mechanisms
of brain function.
The long-term goal and major challenge for basic
neurobiology is to obtain an coherent understanding of the
relations between molecular and cellular signalling
mechanisms, the activity of the neural networks, and brain
function.
Philosophy of consciousness
- what is consciousness?
What does it mean to be a conscious being, a subject?
Questions of this type have long been fundamental themes in
philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. However, over the
last decade such questions have increasingly also attracted
interest from researchers in a wider range of disciplines.
A notable feature of recent research on consciousness is
that it is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary
Clinical neurobiological research
- interaction between basic and clinical research
Clinical neurobiological research investigates the
connection between human behaviour and the functioning of
the nervous system and builds up knowledge about
neurological and psychiatric disorders such as anxiety,
motor disturbance and dementia.
The study of signal transmission in and functional
activation of the brain has a particularly prominent place,
and includes current mapping of motor control and learning.
There is therefore a strong basis for making a significant
contribution to exploration of the body-mind problem by
means of techniques that produce images of brain function in
living, active human beings.
Cognitive psychology
- how we sense and percept the world
Cognitive psychology studies conscious mental life and
cognition, including sensation, perception, attention,
memory, language, thinking, and visual imagery, together
with problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Results obtained in cognitive psychology are used in the
design of technical and IT-based systems and other
applications, but are also becoming increasingly important
in the understanding and treatment of cognitive functional
disturbances associated with brain damage, psychotic
conditions and mild or transient crisis states.
Machines that think – Robots that see
- construction of intelligent machines
How might it be possible to build an intelligent machine? A
machine such as, for example, a domestic robot that could
tidy up and know the difference between toys and rubbish?
One of the important aims in this research area is to build
robots that that are able to be set to solve a new problem
using examples of the solution. It must be able to
accumulate its experience and learn from it.
Psychiatric research
- examining disturbances of consciousness
Research into the psychotic disorders, especially
schizophrenia, lies at the heart of the research in the
disturbances of consciousness.
Schizophrenia involves changes in the basic sense of
identity and changes in the immediate, automatic experience
of meaning and naturalness of the world. Patients with
schizophrenia may experience peculiar changes in thinking,
emotional life, voluntary acts and social relations.
Research on schizophrenia allows us to focus on many aspects
of consciousness and biological conditions that may
accompany changes and deviations in the functioning of
consciousness.
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