News
Expectation violations signal goals in novel human communication
Effective communication not only requires a relatively noise-free transmission of a message, but also a common ground between sender and receiver to facilitate the understanding of meaning. This is certainly the case in language, where a sender’s message is well-understood, when it meets the receiver’s expectations. But how does this work, when a common language is not available?
This paper
provides integrated behavioral, computational, and neural evidence that under these circumstances expectancy violations are the central mechanism that can fulfill the signaling function required for communicating a goal position to the receiver. This “action selection by surprise” policy complements the traditional “action selection by value” policy common in reinforcement learning models and suggests that humans can flexibly choose between these policies based on task demands.
Recent Publications
Vlemincx E, Sprenger C, Büchel C. (2021) Expectation and dyspnea: The neurobiological basis of respiratory nocebo effects.Eur Respir J.
Fujiwara E, Madan CR, Caplan JB, Sommer T. (2021) Emotional arousal impairs association memory: roles of prefrontal cortex regions. Learn Mem. 28(3):76-81.
Alink A, Blank H. (2021) Can expectation suppression be explained by reduced attention to predictable stimuli? Neuroimage
Kampermann L, Tinnermann A, Büchel C. (2021). Generalization of placebo pain relief. Pain. 2020 Dec 15. doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002166.
Tinnermann A, Büchel C, Cohen-Adad J.(2921) Cortico-spinal imaging to study pain. Neuroimage
Job vacancies
The institute offers an excellent multidisciplinary environment with its own physics, psychology and clinical neuroscience research group, as well as a 3T MR tomograph and a whole head MEG system. Interdisciplinary work in a lively and creative environment is natural for us.
We are looking for highly-motivated employees with interest and preliminary work in the neurosciences, preferably with experience in imaging processes (e.g. SPM). Program knowledge (e.g., Matlab) is welcome.
This results in ongoing employment opportunities for phd students and post-docs.
A speculative application with letter of motivation and CV to
sysneuro@uke.de we look forward.
-
PhD-students and post-doc vacancies
This results in ongoing employment opportunities for phd students and post-docs.
A speculative application with letter of motivation and CV to sysneuro@uke.de we look forward. -
Student assistant
It is often short-term demand for student assistants.
Please send your application (preferably as a single .pdf file) to
sysneuro@uke.de .