Material Constraints Enabling Human Cognition »MatCo«

Recent breakthroughs in comparative neurobiological research highlight specific features of the connectivity structure of the human brain, which open new perspectives on understanding the neural mechanisms of human-specific higher cognition and language. In delineating the material basis of human cognition and language, neurobiologically founded modelling appears as the method of choice, as it allows not only for ‘external fitting’ of models to key experimental data, but, in addition, for ‘internal’ or ‘material fitting’ of the model components to the structure of brains, cortical areas and neuronal circuits.

This novel research pathway offers biologically well-founded and computationally precise perspectives on addressing exciting hitherto unanswered fundamental questions, such as the following: How can humans build vocabularies of tens and hundreds of thousands of words, whereas our closest evolutionary relatives typically use below 100? How is semantic meaning implemented for gestures and words, and, more specifically, for referential and categorical terms? How can grounding and interpretability of abstract symbols be anchored biologically? Which features of connectivity between nerve cells are crucial for the formation of discrete representations and categorical combination? Would modelling of cognitive functions using brain-constrained networks allow for better predictions on brain activity indexing the processing of signs and their meaning?

The project »MatCo« led by Friedemann Pulvermüller at the Freie Universität Berlin uses novel insights from human neurobiology translated into mathematically exact computational models to find new answers to long-standing questions in cognitive science, linguistics and philosophy. Models replicating structural differences between human and non-human primate brains help delineate mechanisms underlying specifically human cognitive capacities. Key experiments validate critical model predictions and new neurophysiological data is applied to further improve the biologically-constrained networks.

»MatCo« is funded with 2.5 Mio. Euro by the European Research Council. Friedemann Pulvermüller is teaching Linguistics and Neuroscince of Language at the Department of Philosophy of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. He had been taking PhDs in Linguistics and Psychology at the Universities of Tübingen and Konstanz before joining the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University as a Programme Leader in the Neuroscience of Language. He is a Principle Investigator at »Matters of Activity«, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and at the Einstein Center of Neuroscience Berlin. In 2011, he moved to the Freie Universität to support the Cluster of Excellence »Languages of Emotions«.