Professor Hinze Hodendoorn: The brain in real-time: predicting the present, reconstructing the past

Abstract

We feel that we perceive events in the environment as they unfold in real-time. However, this intuitive view of perception is impossible to implement in the nervous system due to biological constraints such as neural transmission delays. Instead, our real-time experience of the world around us is the product of predictive mechanisms that predict ahead to compensate for delays in incoming sensory input. Complementing these processes, reconstruction mechanisms post-dictively revise our perception of the recent past (for example when predictions do not come true). In this talk, I provide an overview of empirical work showing that rather than simply reflecting sensory input as it comes in, real-time perception is a highly active process of anticipation and reconstruction

Bio

Hinze is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He leads the TimingLab, which focuses on understanding the time-course of the neural processes that underlie cognitive functions, especially perception. He is currently particularly interested in how the brain solves the complications that arise because its own processing takes time. The TimingLab addresses this question using a combination of time-resolved EEG decoding approaches, computational modeling, and behavioural paradigms. In addition, the lab is currently applying this knowledge to real-time perception and decision-making in a road safety context.