The Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) is a 10-year program that will support projects aimed at uncovering how opportunities for action offered by the world shape representations in the mind and the brain.

Participation in SCENE marks an important success for Cognitive Science at TU Darmstadt. Over the next ten years, the international SCENE research program will fund interdisciplinary projects to investigate the connection between perception and action – a core topic of the Centre for Cognitive Science at TU Darmstadt.

Professor Constantin A. Rothkopf represents TU Darmstadt as the only German institution in the international consortium. Rothkopf, Scientific Director of the Center for Cognitive Science and spokesperson for the TAM cluster, will head the “Human Team” within SCENE. In this role, he will contribute his extensive expertise in computer-aided cognition modeling, machine learning and neuroscience.

Affordances are at the center of SCENE. We are constantly perceiving the world around us. As we do, we make decisions on how to move our bodies. The brain’s ability to process all the required sensory and motor information for this is no small feat. And one of neuroscience’s most significant questions is how exactly our brains integrate these two information sources as efficiently as they do. SCENE builds on principles from ecological psychology, which posit that one of the brain’s core functions is to encode affordances. An affordance is an opportunity for action available in an environment — for example, a chair affords the opportunity to sit. By encoding affordances, the brain closely links perception with action. Identifying how the brain encodes and uses this information will bridge gaps in our understanding of cognition.

The Simons Foundation, established in 1994 and based in the United States, has committed itself to the advancement of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. It supports various scientific projects, including the Simons Collaboration projects. SCENE was selected in a multi-stage process: Out of an initial 245 project outlines submitted, it remained the only funded project after two further rounds of review. A total of 20 principal investigators from the USA, Europe and Israel are participating – including Rothkopf as the only representative of a German university. The collaboration, which will officially begin July 1, will provide over 8 Mio USD per year across six teams of researchers.