15. January 2021 : New publication on mood primed perception of our world

Czeszumski A, Albers F, Walter S and König P (2020)
Let me make you happy, and I’ll tell you how you look around: Using an approach-avoidance task as an embodied mood prime in a free-viewing task
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.09.289249 bioRxiv

Although emotional priming has been an important topic in research on top-down influences in overt attention, in particular regarding external and internal affective influences, there is little research using embodied primes.

In our eye-tracking...

11. January 2021 : New publication on spatial learning

König SU, Keshava A, Clay V, Rittershofer K, Kuske N and König P (2020).
Embodied spatial knowledge acquisition in immersive Virtual Reality: Comparison to map exploration.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.12.903096 bioRxiv

Investigating spatial learning in virtual environments allows studying different sources of information under controlled conditions. We built a virtual environment in the style of a European village and investigated spatial knowledge acquisition by experience in the...

02. December 2020 : New publication on the role of α-band activity in tactile stimuli processing

OssandónJ, König P and Heed T (2020)
No evidence for a role of spatially modulated alpha-band activity in tactile remapping and short-latency, overt orienting behavior
J Neurosci 40: 9088-9102

Oscillatory α-band activity is commonly associated with spatial attention and multisensory prioritization. It has also been suggested to reflect the automatic transformation of tactile stimuli from a skin-based, somatotopic reference frame into an external one.

Previous research has not convincingly...

25. September 2020 : VR-Projekt WESTDRIVE auf der Jobmesse Osnabrück

Auf der diesjährigen Jobmesse in Lingen, Osnabrück und Hannover ist auch die Universität Osnabrück vom Institut für Kognitionswissenschaft vertreten. Das junge Team, bestehenend aus Bachelor- und Masterstudenten unter der Anleitung von zwei Doktoranden, präsentiert zu diesem Anlass ein interaktives Experiment:
In Westdrive LoopAR wird in einer virtuellen Umgebung getestet, unter welchen Bedingungen der Fahrer eines autonom fahrenden Kfz am schnellsten und effizientesten wieder die Kontrolle...

13. May 2020 : New review paper on hyperscanning research:

Czeszumski A, Eustergerling S, Lang A, Menrath D, Gerstenberger M, Schuberth S, Schreiber F, Zuluaga Rendon Z and König P (2020). Hyperscanning: a valid method to study neural inter-brain underpinnings of social interaction. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00039. Front Hum Neurosci 14:39

Social interactions are a crucial part of human life. Understanding the neural underpinnings of social interactions is a challenging task that the hyperscanning method has been trying to tackle over the last...

06. April 2020 : New publication on VR application in scientific research and data acquisition:

Nezami FN, Wächter MA, Pipa G and König P (2020). Project Westdrive: Unity city with self-driving cars and pedestrians for virtual reality studies. DOI:10.3389/fict.2020.00001. Front ICT 7:1

Virtual environments will deeply alter the way we conduct scientific studies on human behavior. Possible applications range from spatial navigation over addressing moral dilemmas in a more natural manner to therapeutic applications for affective disorders. Until now, however, programming a suitable...

03. April 2020 : New publication on deciphering the communication routing in the human brain:

Finger H, Gast R, Gerloff C, Engel AK and König P (2019). Probing neural networks for dynamic switches of communication pathways. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007551. PLoS Comput Biol 15: e1007551

Dynamic communication and routing play important roles in the human brain in order to facilitate flexibility in task solving and thought processes. Here, we present a network perturbation methodology that allows investigating dynamic switching between different network pathways based on phase...

01. April 2020 : New publication on the scalability and limitations of group performance:

Wahn B, Kingstone A, Czeszumski A, Labusch M and König P (2020). Dyadic and triadic search: Benefits, costs, and predictors of group performance. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01915-0. Atten Percept Psychophys

In daily life, humans often perform visual tasks, such as solving puzzles or searching for a friend in a crowd. Performing these visual searches jointly with a partner can be beneficial. To date, it is unknown whether these group benefits scale up to triads or whether the cost of...

27. March 2020 : New publication on autonomous driving and related ethical questions:

Kallioinen N, Pershina M, Zeiser J, Nosrat Nezami F, Pipa G, Stephan A and König P (2019). Moral judgements on the actions of self-driving cars and human drivers in dilemma situations from different perspectives. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02415. Front Psychol 10:2415

„Self-driving cars have the potential to greatly improve public safety. However, their introduction onto public roads must overcome both ethical and technical challenges. To further understand the ethical issues of...

23. March 2020 : New publication on the informative value of measurements in virtual reality vs. self assessments

Sütfeld LR, Ehinger BV, König P and Pipa G (2019). How does the method change what we measure? Comparing virtual reality and text-based surveys for the assessment of moral decisions in traffic dilemmas. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223108. PLoS One 14:e0223108

„The question of how self-driving cars should behave in dilemma situations has recently attracted a lot of attention in science, media and society. A growing number of publications amass insight into the factors underlying the...