Recent News

Conference Homepage: https://predcommlab.github.io/symposium-2026/#about
Upcoming Events
<i>Psychology</i> <br>Mats Dombrowe (RUB) <br><b>Tau pathology disrupts neural navigation codes in the human medial temporal lobe</b>
<i>Philosophy</i> <br>Stephan Pohl (NYU) & Wej Ji Ma (NYU)<br><b>Clarifying the Conceptual Dimensions of Representation in Neuroscience</b>
<i>Philosophy</i> <br>Megan Peters (UCL) & Hojjat Azimi Asrari (UCL)<br><b>How Brains Build Higher Order Representations of Uncertainty</b>
<i>Biopsychology</i> <br>Anika Kuckertz (Heinrich Heine Universität Düssledorf) & Kai Benning (FZ Juelich)) <br><b>TBA</b>
<i>Philosophy</i> <br>Nathan Wildman (Tilburg)<br><b>Fictional virtual actions</b>
<i>Cognitive Psychology</i> <br>Leander Fester (RUB) <br><b>Freezing in humans? Postural sway as a readout of conditioned fear</b>
Relevant Publications
For full list of selected publications, see the publications page
What is self-control? A discussion of unresolved issues.
Representational dynamics during extinction of fear memories in the human brain
Predictive acoustical processing in human cortical layers
Remembering without (representational) memory: a neuro-computational study on regaining categoricity and compositionality from minimal traces
The effects of pre-extinction stress vs. physical exercise on contextual retrieval and generalization
Enhancing metacomprehension accuracy and regulation decisions in writing from multiple texts: The role of rubrics
Accuracy of self-control judgments by informants: can others tell where and how much we care, struggle, and succeed?
Stress, path integration, and the entorhinal cortex
Loops all the way up: Recurrency as an implementation-first primitive for consciousness
Accuracy of self-control judgments by informants: can others tell where and how much we care, struggle, and succeed?
Prediction error processing and sharpening of expected information across the face-processing hierarchy
The Relationship Between Vividness of Positive Future-Oriented Mental Imagery, Anhedonia, and Positive Affect
The vividness with which people can imagine positive events happening in their future has been linked to a number of different aspects of psychopathology and wellbeing. These relationships are hypothesised to arise from the role of mental imagery in thinking …
Extinction context is learned by pigeons, not given by the environment
Abstract The saying “context is everything” underscores the importance of interpreting things, be they quotes, events, actions, or stimuli, not in isolation but in the light of a bigger picture – their context. This is evident even in fundamental forms …
The multidimensional profile methodology (MPM) for comparative cognition: towards a universal strategy of understanding animal minds
Abstract How can we develop an adequate scientific understanding of the minds of nonhuman animals? We argue for a methodology based on multi-dimensional profile accounts. Such accounts are already used for the comparative study of norm cognition, consciousness, empathy and …
Regional prefrontal and hippocampal differences in gray matter volume are linked to the propensity for renewal in extinction learning
Introduction The renewal effect of extinction describes the reoccurrence of an extinguished response if recall is performed in a context that is not the same as the extinction context. This learning phenomenon is clinically relevant, since it potentially interferes with …
When is learning “effortful”? Scrutinizing the concept of mental effort in cognitively-oriented research from a motivational perspective
An Experimental Investigation of the Causal Role of Mental Imagery in the Experience of Involuntary Memories
Involuntary memories are thought to affect emotion, cognition, and behaviour, and it is often assumed that their impact is amplified when they are rich in mental imagery. However, this assumption has yet to be directly investigated. The current study tested …
Predictive processing’s flirt with transcendental idealism
Abstract The popular predictive processing (PP) framework posits prediction error minimization (PEM) as the sole mechanism in the brain that can account for all mental phenomena, including consciousness. I first highlight three ambitions associated with major presentations of PP: (1) …
Interindividual Variability in Memory Performance Is Related to Corticothalamic Networks during Memory Encoding and Retrieval
Encoding new memories relies on functional connections between the medial temporal lobe and the frontoparietal cortices. Multiscan fMRI showed changes in these functional connections before and after memory encoding, potentially influenced by the thalamus. As different thalamic nuclei are interconnected …

