Psychoblog

Dear all,

We are delighted to announce that Tobias Schuwerk (LMU Munich) will give a talk on participatory research  as part of our CogSci colloquium.

Time: Thursday, July 9^th 12:15

Location: Room 2.111, Waldweg 26

Abstract: 

Research with, not about — but how? Paths toward participatory research

‚Research with, not about‘ is easily said — but how do you actually put it into practice? Participatory research shares decision-making and creative control between academic expertise and expertise grounded in lived experience, turning research about the people it concerns into research with them. It promises more relevant questions, higher quality, and greater trust, yet at the same time places considerable demands on mindset, time, and structures. This talk is intended for anyone who would like to do participatory work themselves. After briefly arriving at a shared understanding of the basic idea, its history, and common recommendations, with the ladder of participation as a framework, three very different fields take center stage: work with autistic people; efforts to address sexualized violence in a church context, carried jointly with experiential expertise; and participatory research with children and adolescents. Along the way, the talk presents attempted solutions of its own: approaches that have proven useful in practice but are expressly not a blueprint and remain open to refinement and disagreement. Comparing across these fields reveals which principles carry over and which pitfalls keep recurring, offering practical pointers for participatory work of one’s own.

Dear All,

The RTG 2906 „Curiosity“ invites to a Guest Talk: „From Brain Circuits to Behaviour: Mechanisms of Curiosity and Memory„. The talk is delivered by our Mercator Fellow,  Matthias Gruber from the Cardiff University. Scheduled for June 23^rd, 12:15 pm to 1:30 pm in Verfügungsgebäude, room 1.103.

What is the lecture about?

Curiosity is widely assumed to enhance learning and memory, yet the mechanisms through which it translates into lasting knowledge remain poorly understood, and it is unclear whether its benefits arise directly or via the processes it recruits. In particular, it is unclear how interactions between hippocampal–midbrain circuitry, behavioural engagement (e.g., exploration), and development shape curiosity-driven learning. In this talk, I present three complementary projects that take a mechanistic, multi-level approach.

First, combining ultra-high-field 7T fMRI with a trivia-based paradigm, we examine the fine-grained hippocampal–dopaminergic circuitry underlying curiosity in humans. We found that curiosity elicits activity in a key dopaminergic region (the ventral tegmental area) as well as in the subiculum of the hippocampal formation, a key hippocampal output region, and that interactions between the ventral tegmental area and the hippocampus predict enhanced memory.

Second, using virtual environments, we test whether curiosity enhances spatial memory directly or by driving exploration. A preregistered yoked design dissociates curiosity from the opportunity to act on it, allowing us to test how the opportunity for agency shapes curiosity-related memory benefits.

Third, I present interim findings from a preregistered fMRI study of curiosity-driven learning in late childhood and early adolescence. Using the trivia paradigm, we assess how curiosity and prediction-related signals shape memory and hippocampal–dopaminergic circuitry during encoding in 10–14-year-olds.

Together, these findings bridge circuit-level, behavioural, and developmental accounts of curiosity, suggesting that curiosity enhances learning through multiple interacting pathways linking brain, behaviour, and development.

About the speaker

Dr. Matthias Gruber is an Associate Professor and the Group Leader of the Motivation & Memory Lab at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), UK. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London, UK, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California at Davis, USA. Dr. Gruber is currently visiting the University of Göttingen, the heartland of curiosity research, as a Mercator Fellow as part of the RTG 2906 “Curiosity”.

No registration necessary, all are welcome.