Progress in research on mind and brain in the past has benefited greatly from a conceptual separation into distinct functional domains, such as perception, memory or action. Recent results, however, stress the importance of an integrative view and thus the necessity for common principles that unify these domains into one view of mind and brain. The ZiF research group centers on the working hypothesis that major functional domains share competition and priority control as key features. We were able to win more than 20 internationally leading scientists as fellows, from various disciplines (biology, computer science, linguistics, medicine, and psychology), and countries (USA, UK, Germany, Canada, Israel, etc.). A major goal is integrating the fellows expertise in the domains of perception, memory, and action to a joint quest for common principles of competition and priority control principles at the level of frameworks, theories, and computational models. These principles, which will be approached from four perspectives vision, task, real-world, and priority maps shall not exclusively encompass the aforementioned domains, but also be open to other domains (such as decision-making", etc.), which may also rely on competition and priority control. If successful, the quest for integrative principles of competition and priority control will not only greatly advance our basic-science understanding of mind and brain, but may also foster the development of autonomous intelligent systems for operation in realistic scenarios as well as the assessment and treatment of neurological patients, in which simultaneous disturbances of perception, memory and action are frequent.
Competition and priority control in mind and brain: new perspectives from task-driven vision
Publications of the Research Group
Theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B
Attentional selection in visual perception, memory and action: A quest for common principles
Editors, W. Schneider, W. Einhäuser, & G. Horstmann
October 19, 2013; Vol. 368, No. 1628
Introduction: Attentional selection in visual perception, memory and action: a quest for cross-domain integration
Werner X. Schneider, Wolfgang Einhäuser, and Gernot Horstmann
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0053
Review article: Attending to the possibilities of action
Glyn W. Humphreys, Sanjay Kumar, Eun Young Yoon, Melanie Wulff, Katherine L. Roberts, and M. Jane Riddoch
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0059
Research article: The role of observers' gaze behaviour when watching object manipulation tasks: predicting and evaluating the consequences of action
J. Randall Flanagan, Gerben Rotman, Andreas F. Reichelt, and Roland S. Johansson
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0063
Research article: Reach preparation enhances visual performance and appearance
Martin Rolfs, Bonnie M. Lawrence, and Marisa Carrasco
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0057
Review article: Feature-based attention: it is all bottom-up priming
Jan Theeuwes
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0055
Research article: Temporal expectancy in the context of a theory of visual attention
Signe Vangkilde, Anders Petersen, and Claus Bundesen
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0054
Review article: A biased competition account of attention and memory in Alzheimer's disease
Kathrin Finke, Nicholas Myers, Peter Bublak, and Christian Sorg
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0062
Review article: Selective visual processing across competition episodes: a theory of task-driven visual attention and working memory
Werner X. Schneider
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0060
Research article: The relationship between visual working memory and attention: retention of precise colour information in the absence of effects on perceptual selection
Andrew Hollingworth and Seongmin Hwang
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0061
Research article: Modelling eye movements in a categorical search task
Gregory J. Zelinsky, Hossein Adeli, Yifan Peng, and Dimitris Samaras
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0058
Research article: Attention in natural scenes: contrast affects rapid visual processing and fixations alike
Bernard Marius 't Hart, Hannah Claudia Elfriede Fanny Schmidt, Ingo Klein-Harmeyer, and Wolfgang Einhäuser
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0067
Research article: Priorities for selection and representation in natural tasks
Benjamin W. Tatler, Yoriko Hirose, Sarah K. Finnegan, Riina Pievilainen, Clare Kirtley, and Alan Kennedy
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0066
Research article: Memory and prediction in natural gaze control
Gabriel Diaz, Joseph Cooper, and Mary Hayhoe
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0064
Research article: Selection of visual information for lightness judgements by eye movements
Matteo Toscani, Matteo Valsecchi, and Karl R. Gegenfurtner
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0056
Research article: Evidence for differential top-down and bottom-up suppression in posterior parietal cortex
Koorosh Mirpour and James W. Bisley
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0069