6 pm (CET)

Venue:

Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Jägerstraße 22/23

10117 Berlin

Please pre-register here

Understanding how our sensory apparatus generates percepts and coherent experiences of the world has been an outstanding quest of centuries. Throughout history, philosophers, biologists, psychologists, and – in the past few decades – cognitive neuroscientists have all sought answers to how our brain generates thinking and feeling, behavior, and consciousness. In her lecture, Ayelet Landau will discuss a bias that has, by and large, characterized this quest, namely a spatial approach towards understanding the neural correlates and mechanisms of cognition.

She will critically assess the spatial emphasis in the study of the brain and cognitive functions and will provide a historical account of this emphasis, pointing to tacit assumptions and limitations of this scientific approach. She will also highlight moments in which the potential for incorporating time and temporal organizing principles was either overlooked or missed due to the ruling perspective. She will then discuss the value and potential of integrating the temporal domain into the understanding of the brain and cognitive functions by providing examples that have finally emerged in the field.

In cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences