The Göttingen Cognition Forum: Curiosity & Interaction

13 Oct 2025, 09:00 → 15 Oct 2025, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Tagungszentrum Alte Mensa Göttingen

Aleksandra Bovt (IRTG 2172 PRoTECT), Alexander Gail (GAU-GEMI), Britta Korkowsky (UXGS), Christian Schloegl (SFB 1528 - Cognition of Interaction), Isabelle Matthias (CIDAS / Universität Göttingen), Mariia Shitik (UYST), Rebecca Jürgens (UBPP)

We are pleased to announce the First Göttingen Cognition Forum:

Curiosity & Interaction

The conference brings together researchers from neuroscience, psychology, behavioral biology, computational sciences and related fields, focusing on how social interactions and interaction with the environment shape cognition in humans and non-human animals. The meeting aims to foster interdisciplinary discussions and connect researchers across disciplines and career stages. The program welcomes empirical, theoretical, and computational contributions, including studies on neurodivergence, novel methodologies, and AI-based analysis tools.

 

Plenary speakers:

• Jacqueline Gottlieb (Columbia University): Learning, Memory, Decision-Making
• Bahador Bahrami (LMU Munich): Social Neuroscience, Decision-Making
• Judith Burkart (University of Zurich): Comparative Psychology, Cognitive Evolution, 
• Steve Chang (Yale University): Social Neuroscience, Social Behavior
• Nachum Ulanovsky (Weizmann Institute of Science): Neural Underpinnings of Natural Behavior
• Agostina Palmigiano (UC London): Computational Neuroscience

 

Empirical, theoretical, and computational approaches are equally valued, as are perspectives across the lifespan and insights from clinical research on neurodivergent and disabled populations. In addition, we particularly welcome contributions on methodological advances and artificial intelligence, including novel approaches for analyzing cognitive and behavioral processes.

The two-day main symposium will be followed by a one-day satellite symposium focusing on Computational Neuroscience.

We are committed to fostering an open, inclusive, and diversity-friendly environment where researchers from all backgrounds feel welcome. Our conference embraces a respectful and supportive atmosphere for all participants, regardless of career stage, discipline, or personal background. For more details, please refer to our Diversity Statement and Code of Conduct.

Registration has been closed. On-site registration is not possible. 

 

We look forward to welcoming you to Göttingen!

 

 

Organisers:

   

 

Sponsors:

 

We are grateful for the support of the University of Göttingen and the German Primate Center. 

Folie Programmskizze.jpg

programm.pdf

Monday 13 October

Registration

Registration will be possible in the entrance area of the Alte Mensa am Wilhelmsplatz

Plenaries

Convener: Alexander Gail (DPZ)

1 The Mystery and Significance of Curiosity for Brain and Behavior

Converging evidence suggests that animals are motivated by curiosity, the intrinsic desire to know, but little is known about the mechanisms of this process. I will discuss historical reasons for why curiosity has been neglected in cognitive science, and the crucial importance of this process for higher cognitive functions and ecological behavior beyond the narrow confines of the laboratory. I will describe a neurocomputational model of curiosity based on meta-level regulation of the fronto-parietal network by an executive circuit – and discuss how the model furthers our mechanistic understanding of curiosity in terms of behavior and neural activity.

Speaker: Jacqueline Gottlieb (Columbia University)

2025_Gottlieb_Goettingen Short Oct 2025.ppt

From curiosity to exploration

Convener: Elena Altmann

2 Disentangling the Influences of Curiosity and Active Exploration on Cognitive Map Formation

Curiosity has long been assumed to promote exploration, and in turn, to support cognitive map formation. However, little research has directly investigated these claims. Recently, Cen et al. (2024) demonstrated that when participants feel more curious about specific virtual environments, they (1) explore those environments more thoroughly, and (2) display better memory for environmental layouts. These data support the existence of a relationship between curiosity and cognitive map formation; however, because participants always had the opportunity to act on their curiosity (by using it to guide their exploration), the precise nature of that relationship remains uncertain.

Here, we ask whether curiosity directly promotes cognitive map formation, or whether its benefits depend on the ability to actively engage in curiosity-guided exploration. Through a yoked design, two groups of participants engaged in either active or passive exploration through a set of novel virtual environments. This manipulation allows us to disentangle the influences of self-reported curiosity (varying trial-by-trial across all participants) and active exploration (manipulated between groups) on cognitive map formation.

Speaker: Ellen O'Donoghue (Cardiff University)

Gottingen2025_EllenODonoghue_Final.pptx

3 Curious but helpless: A unique developmental trajectory towards social learning in humans

Sophisticated social learning abilities have been considered as one of the key behavioural traits of the human phenotype, and many authors have appealed to domain-specific cognitive learning mechanisms to explain why it emerged in humans specifically. However, according to a recent theoretical proposal, the Postnatal Dependency Hypothesis, human infants' social learning abilities are grounded in a domain-general, curiosity-driven learning processes that are shaped by infants' early bodily and cognitive development. Compared to other animals, human infants are born with comparatively advanced cognitive abilities, but have an exceptionally long period of parental dependency. This results in a species-unique developmental niche, in which cognitively advanced neonates learn to interact with the world predominantly with, and through, their caregivers. Because infants are limited in their ability to act on their environment directly, curiosity-driven learning processes favour engaging with others. This creates a developmental bias towards social learning and exploration that continues into adulthood. Meanwhile, even evolutionary related species, such as chimpanzees, have a significantly shorter period of dependency. Because they can explore the world on their own from a much younger age, they are less likely to encounter possibilities for engaging with others. Therefore, they are more likely to act on their environment directly, rather than by interacting with others, favouring non-social learning strategies.

In this talk, I want to discuss this process from the perspective of curiosity-driven learning mechanisms, the role they can take in explaining species-unique behaviours, and discuss empirical implications of this perspective on developmental research.

Speaker: Christian Kliesch (Universität Potsdam)

Kliesch - Curious but helpless (2025) s.pdf

4 Curiosity beyond novelty and its social contagion in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Curiosity plays a critical role in primate cognition, yet its mechanisms remain underexplored. Most research has focused on responses to novel stimuli, often overlooking curiosity toward familiar objects and the potential for social influences on curiosity. This study examined both novelty-driven and socially contagious curiosity in 22 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at two zoos, Leintalzoo, Germany (N = 12) and Walterzoo, Switzerland (N = 10). In an object exploration task, chimpanzees were presented with familiar and novel objects independently and simultaneously. Contrary to expectations of a novelty bias, linear mixed models (α = .05) revealed no significant effect of stimulus type on exploration duration in either condition (independent: p = .207; simultaneous: p = .067). There were group differences as chimpanzees at Walterzoo explored both types of objects similarly, while chimpanzees at Leintalzoo showed more varied responses. In a social contagious task, observer chimpanzees watched a conspecific demonstrator express emotion-laden curiosity (frustration, surprise) toward a concealed object inside a colored box. When later given access to two boxes, one matching the demonstrator's and one different, observers at Leintalzoo preferentially explored the matching box (p = .042), suggesting emotional cues may trigger social contagion of curiosity. This effect was not observed at Walterzoo. These findings suggest that curiosity in chimpanzees is not strictly novelty-driven and may be shaped by social context and group-specific dynamics. This study highlights the importance of exploring both individual and social pathways of curiosity to better understand its role in social learning and cultural transmission in primates.

Speaker: Saein Lee (Department of Psychology, University of Zurich)

GCF_2025_SL_2.pptx

5 Understanding children’s perspectives in social interactions

Children's initial steps towards social interaction begin with their attention to a desired social partner, typically by focusing on the partner's face. While research has shown that children tend to look more at adults' faces than children's faces in controlled environments, this may not accurately reflect the complexities of real-world social interactions. To gain a deeper understanding of children's social preferences, we conducted two studies to examine their attention to adults and children in both laboratory and natural settings.
In a lab-based study, we found that young children under the age of 3 tend to look more at adults than children, whereas this preference is not present in children aged 4-11. With the advent of advanced technologies, such as head-mounted eye-trackers, we can now investigate children's looking behavior in natural settings with live social partners. Our recent study employed this technology to examine children's attention to adults' and children's faces as they navigate a crowded room. We hypothesize that children will exhibit a preference for looking at child and infant faces compared to adult faces, and this preference may be modulated by their familiarity and experience with the faces in view.
Our ongoing data analysis will provide valuable insights into children's social interest in people of different ages in real-world settings. This research offers an interesting perspective on children's experiences in social interactions, shedding new light on the complexities of social interactions and providing an interesting angle for this conference.

Speaker: Sarah Eiteljoerge (Psychology of Language, University of Göttingen)

Eiteljoerge_ForCog102025.pptx

12:20 Lunch break

From curiosity to exploration

Convener: Feride Nur Haskaraca Kizilay

6 Dogs with a large vocabulary of object labels learn new labels by overhearing ‎like 1.5-year-old infants

‎18-month-old children can learn novel words by overhearing triadic interactions. ‎Evidence of label learning from overheard speech in nonhuman species would suggest ‎that the social-learning skills enabling this process may have also evolved in other ‎species. Gifted Word Learner Dogs (GWLD) learn object labels by engaging in playful ‎social interactions with their owners. We examined whether GWLD can also learn object ‎labels by observing 3rd-party interactions, and how this compares to their typical ‎learning context. In Exp. 1, 10 GWLD were exposed to two conditions. In the Overhearing ‎Condition (OC), dogs observed two owners engaging in a triadic interaction with a toy. In ‎the Addressed Condition (AC), one of the owners played with the dog with a new toy. In ‎the tests conducted after each condition the dogs demonstrated they have learned the ‎names of the toys by performing significantly above chance in both conditions (Wilcoxon ‎tests: AC: W = 45, p = 0.004, OC: W=54, p=0.004), with no difference between conditions ‎‎(Wilcoxon test; AC vs. OC: W=14, p=0.622), mirroring previous findings with 18-month-‎olds. In Exp. 2, we tested the ability of 8 GWLD to learn new object-label mappings when ‎the two stimuli were presented in temporal discontinuity (first seeing the object and ‎then hearing its label). Here too, he dogs performed above chance (Wilcoxon test: W=28, ‎p=0.011). These findings imply that GWLD possess several social learning skills that are ‎functionally similar to those employed by 18-month-olds and contribute to our ‎understanding of how attention and motivation influence social learning.‎

Speaker: Shany Dror (Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary medicine, Vienna)

Dror_G Dogs_Gottingen 2025.pptx

7 Uncertainty guides learning: How children learn and revise new word meanings in ambiguity

When learning novel words, referential ambiguity is a constant part of children’s learning environment. However, to date it is unclear whether children are aware of the different levels of uncertainty in referent identification, and to what extent they can effectively use this information. In two pre-registered studies, we assessed preschoolers’ and adults’ ability to monitor their uncertainty during referential ambiguity and update labels dependent on their initial learning context.

In study 1, we asked 4-5-year-olds (n=82) and adults (n=70) to find the referents of novel words in contexts with maximal ambiguity (two novel objects), medium ambiguity (one novel and one known object, resolvable via mutual exclusivity), or minimal ambiguity (one novel object). We measured explicit assessments of their own uncertainty, as well as other uncertainty and information seeking behaviors. Afterwards, participants faced counterevidence to their initial word-object-mappings, and chose which mappings (learned in more vs. less ambiguous contexts) to update. Results show that children’s (explicit and implicit) uncertainty and their information seeking increased with referential ambiguity. Further, while high uncertainty during initial word-object-mappings increased adults’ willingness to update, this was not the case for children.

Study 2 thus investigates potential improvements in preschoolers’ (n=90) and adults’ (n=90) updating performance in a task with greater contrast between initial learning contexts. Adults almost exclusively updated the most ambiguously learned word-object-mappings; data collection for children is ongoing. The complete pattern of results will inform discussions about the mechanisms and mental processes that enable children to learn words in the face of ambiguity.

Speaker: Natalie Bleijlevens (Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen)

talk_GöttingenCognitionForum_2025.pptx

8 A social-vocal norm in a non-human primate?

Norms are central to human cognition and interaction, shaping how we communicate and coordinate. Language, in particular, is governed by socially shared expectations about how and when to speak. However, the evolutionary origins of such communicative norms remain poorly understood, as protonormative behaviors in non-human primate communication are rarely documented. Vocal accommodation in the highly social and vocal common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), where individuals modify their call structure to resemble that of their social partners, is a promising candidate for such a communicative norm. While this phenomenon is widespread among marmosets and may represent a precursor to the more advanced vocal learning essential for language, little is known about whether and how it is socially regulated. Using a closed-loop playback design based on the species’ natural vocal turn-taking, we tested twenty individuals in three interactive conditions: responses to (1) their partner’s natural calls, (2) partner-like synthetic calls gradually shifting toward their own call structure (convergence), and (3) partner-like synthetic calls gradually shifting away from it (divergence). Marmosets responded most frequently to converging calls and least to diverging ones. Diverging calls also consistently elicited agonistic tsik calls, indicating social disapproval. Crucially, tsik responses were sensitive to the direction of vocal change rather than absolute vocal similarity, suggesting active tracking of changes in partners’ calls. These findings suggest that vocal accommodation in marmosets is a socially regulated phenomenon with normative properties, offering a potential precursor to communicative norms observed in human language, with implications for the cognitive underpinnings of normativity in communication.

Speaker: Nikhil Phaniraj (Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zurich)

Nikhil_Gottingen_cognition_forum.pptx

9 Navigating Rules with Flexibility: Developmental Insights into Adaptive Rule Understanding

Successfully navigating the social world requires balancing strict adherence to social norms with their flexible interpretation. This poses a particularly interesting problem for early development: learning when to strictly follow rules and when not.

Across two preregistered experiments, we examined how 6- to 11-year-old children evaluate agents who follow different rule strategies: flexible (adapting to context), rigid (strict adherence), or noncompliant (knowingly neglecting the rule). Children rated the agents and chose one to guide them on an unknown planet.

Study 1 (n = 166) presented a safety-relevant rule scenario: agents crossed a street with a traffic light at either a busy or empty road. The flexible agent crossed only when the road was empty, the rigid agent always waited for green, and the noncompliant agent never waited. Younger children’s ratings were more favorable of the rigid agent, while older children increasingly favored the flexible one, suggesting a developmental shift in rule evaluation. We found no age-related differences in children’s choices of a guide for the unknown planet. To further explore this shift, we plan to collect data from adolescents and adults.

To test whether children’s flexibility depends on the type of rule, Study 2 (ongoing, n = 42) uses an arbitrary social rule: wearing a warm hat to avoid upsetting locals on a new planet. Again, agents followed flexible, rigid, or noncompliant strategies. We predict children will favor the flexible agent in this context, reflecting greater acceptance of rule adaptation when rules are conventional rather than safety-related.

Speaker: Daniil Serko (Technical University of Munich, iSearch Lab)

serko_göttingen_presentation.pptx

14:40 Coffee break

Plenaries

Convener: Anne Schacht (Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior)

10 Cognitive and neurobiological basis of interactive decisions under uncertainty

How do people make better—or sometimes worse—decisions when they face uncertainty together? Over the past decade, experimental and theoretical work has begun to map the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie interactive decision-making. I will start by discussing how pairs of individuals may outperform their best member when they share information and confidence. Recent large-scale and cross-cultural studies extend this picture: they reveal the limits of such “two-heads-better-than-one” effects, showing when deliberation enhances accuracy and when it systematically fails. To explain these patterns, we turn to the dynamics of information exchange and belief updating, highlighting the role of confidence weighting, epistemic trust, and social calibration. At the neural level, I present a study demonstrating inter-personal coupling of decision evidence accumulation and confidence generation (Esmaily et al., eLife, 2023) via computational modeling and tested with EEG. Together, these findings provide a multi-level account of how people integrate uncertainty in social contexts—combining behavioral, cross-cultural, neural, and computational evidence—and raise new questions about designing institutions and technologies that harness, rather than hinder, our collective intelligence.

Speaker: Bahador Bahrami (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

From Exploration to Decision-Making

Convener: Sacha Christoph Engelhardt (University of Göttingen)

11 Does socio-ecology shape social preferences in non-human primates?

Helping genetically unrelated others is seen across group-living species and may reflect social preferences including other-regard and inequality aversion. Whereas social preferences have been revealed in humans, there is ambiguous report on other-regard in non-human primates. Observed helping in non-human primates may reflect evolved social preferences but self-regard and by-product mutualism as alternative mechanisms cannot be excluded. Here, to examine whether and to what extent social preferences evolved in non-human primates, we performed social choice experiments in four different primate species—common marmosets, ruffed lemurs, ring-tailed lemurs, and mouse lemurs—that exhibit differences in social organization and care systems. Animals repeatedly chose between four options that gave a benefit (or not) to themselves and (or not) to a passive partner. The four options were regrouped into three orthogonal contrasts for self-regard, other-regard, and equality. Across our four primate species, we find significant positive self-regard, and no evidence for other-regard and inequality aversion (Experiment 1). The emergent social utility function reliably predicted choices in a helping task (Experiment 2). At the same time, for both self-regard and other-regard we find that animals living in less interdependent ecologies, like ruffed, ring-tailed, and mouse lemurs, display weaker self-regard and stronger other-regard compared to those living in more interdependent ecologies with clear role divisions between breeders and helpers (i.e., common marmosets). Results combined suggest weak support for other-regard and inequality aversion in non-human primates.

Speaker: Claudia Fichtel (Deutsches Primatenzentrum)

Fichtel_Claudia_Cognition_forum.pptx

12 Deciding while acting – the planning horizon of primate sensorimotor cortex

Chasing prey or foraging requires evaluating distant stimuli, transforming this information into an action plan, and adjusting ongoing behavior in a timely manner. The evolutionary expansion of the frontal cortex is considered responsible for enhanced behavioral flexibility and an extended spatiotemporal radius of potential actions, enabling us to make mid-movement decisions about distant goals.
The primary motor cortex (M1) and the dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) are two frontal areas known for their critical roles in selecting, planning, and executing arm reaches. These two brain areas differ in evolutionary age, with PMd emerging later than M1. Here we ask whether this difference translates into distinct action-planning horizons when rhesus monkeys approach distant targets during locomotion. Specifically, we hypothesize that PMd, being a more recent evolutionary acquisition, plays a greater role than M1 in representing and selecting targets beyond reach.
To test this, we recorded neural activity from M1 and PMd in three rhesus macaques as they chose between two potential targets while walking towards them.
Our findings show that PMd is involved in selecting distant action goals and can update preferred target representations based on the targets’ value during the ongoing approach behavior. In contrast, M1 is primarily involved in arm movements for locomotion. We conclude that the two brain regions play different roles in adaptive full-body foraging behavior, corresponding to different action horizons: within reach for M1, and beyond reach for PMd, opening new perspectives on the organization of the frontal-lobe action-associated brain regions during ecologically relevant behaviors.

Speaker: Irene Lacal (DPZ)

GCF 2025 - Irene Lacal.pptx

13 Modulation of Neural Function Following Experience in Alternate Social Realities

Learning from social feedback is fundamental for flexible behavior across species, and deficits in such flexibility can impair social wellbeing. To investigate the neural basis of social flexibility, we studied male Drosophila melanogaster, whose quantifiable social behavior and genetic accessibility offer a tractable vertebrate‑relevant model. Building on prior work showing that past social experience influences male courtship behavior, we developed a novel framework to test how distinct forms of social feedback from female flies shape the function of courtship-related neurons in males.

We created “alternate social realities” by pairing males with females that either displayed atypical backward-walking responses to an approaching male (using closed-loop optogenetic activation of neurons driving female backward walking), or behaved normally. Following these experiences, we characterized the function of specific male neurons, using a novel approach: optogenetic neural stimulation with stochastic light patterns (covering a broad range of neural dynamics) paired with automated behavioral identification to uncover the neurons’ roles across the full behavioral repertoire.

Males exposed to backward-walking females showed altered neural-behavior mappings in key courtship-driving neurons, requiring different stimulation patterns to elicit comparable behaviors relative to controls – indicating experience-dependent neural plasticity.

This integrative approach – combining real‑time behavioral tracking, closed‑loop neural manipulation, stochastic optogenetic profiling, and behavioral classification – demonstrates how past social experience modulates neural dynamics to guide future interactions. By modeling how individuals update internal representations in response to social feedback, this work introduces a novel system for studying the neural basis of adaptive social behavior.

Speaker: Dr Frederic Römschied (European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen)

GöttingenCognitionForum2025_RömschiedF_Monday.pptx

14 Conflict detection and cognitive effort during reasoning: behavioral and psychophysiological insights

Optimal decision-making benefits from exploring available options. However, in stable environments exploitation and using the same decision strategy can be more efficient. We tested exploration (gaze pattern) in a base-rate task.
Sixty-two participants had to determine a hypothetical individual’s most likely class membership using two information pieces: base-rates (prevalence) and an individual attribute. The task encompassed congruent, incongruent, and neutral conditions, defined by the alignment of this information. Base rates were either provided before or after attribute information. Responses could be either base-rate congruent (choosing the class favored by the base-rate) or stereotype congruent (choosing the class favored by the attribute). Accuracy, response times, gaze at information pieces (proxy for exploration), and pupil dilation (reflecting cognitive effort) were contrasted across conditions and response types.
Results revealed interindividual differences in response strategies: Stereotype responders primarily gave stereotype congruent responses and seemed to neglect the base-rate information, with no condition effects on response times. Base-rate responders primarily gave base-rate congruent responses and seemed sensitive to base-rate changes, with condition effects on response times and gaze. Deviation from the default response increased response times for both groups. For stereotype responders, base-rate congruent responses were further accompanied by larger pupil dilation, indicating greater cognitive effort. Response time and gaze patterns for base-rate responders in the neutral condition indicated cognitive decoupling even in the absence of conflicting information.
These findings indicate that decision strategies influence exploration (gaze pattern) behaviour.

Speaker: Gerit Pfuhl (GNOI)

Poster session with wine and snacks

15 “The Transformative Power of Love on Social Cognition: Exploring the Role of Emotional Safety in Risk-Taking and Exploration”

Love, often regarded as an emotional experience, is increasingly recognized as a transformative force in shaping social cognition. This literature synthesis examines how emotionally secure, love-based environments reduce psychological threat, encourage exploratory behaviour, and promote cognitive flexibility in social contexts. Drawing on interdisciplinary research from cognitive psychology, developmental science, social neuroscience, and positive psychology, this review integrates findings on how the experience of being loved enhances curiosity, interpersonal engagement, and social risk-taking. A total of 43 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2024 were analysed. Studies were included if they examined the cognitive, behavioural, or neurological impact of love, emotional safety, or secure attachment in relation to curiosity, exploration, or social learning. Studies purely focused on romantic attraction or lacking empirical grounding were excluded. The analysis reveals that emotional safety derived from love fosters an internal state of openness, diminishing fear-based cognition and activating neural and behavioural systems associated with learning, empathy, and exploration. Across developmental stages and relational settings, individuals who feel securely loved demonstrate greater willingness to engage with unfamiliar people, challenge existing beliefs, and adapt to new environments. These interactions suggest that love not only facilitates social bonding but also expands the individual’s capacity for cognitive growth and relational adaptability. This synthesis aligns with the conference theme by highlighting how emotionally meaningful interactions, rooted in love, sculpt cognitive development and social exploration in both humans and non-human animals, offering an enriched view of how curiosity emerges through connection.
Keywords: Love-based cognition, Emotional safety, Social exploration, Curiosity

Speaker: Niluka Hettige (University of Colombo , Sri Lanka)

16 Affective Valence, Self-Relevance, and Uncertainty in Non-instrumental Curiosity: Evidence from a Controlled Trivia Paradigm

Curiosity is a fundamental driver of human behavior. Yet, the interplay of emotional valence, self-relevance, and uncertainty in non-instrumental information-seeking remains unclear. This study aims to disentangle these influences using a trivia-based paradigm designed to isolate intrinsic motivation. Participants will decide whether to wait for answers to trivia questions varying in valence, relevance, and uncertainty, while controlling for confounds such as utility and topic diversity. We hypothesize that participants will be more curious about positively or negatively valenced items than neutral ones, that self-relevance will enhance valence effects, and that curiosity will peak at moderate uncertainty levels. A hierarchical Bayesian model will test these hypotheses, with planned Bayes factor thresholds guiding inference. Our results will clarify how affective and cognitive variables interact in real-time decisions to seek information, advancing current models of curiosity and informing applications in education, health communication, and media engagement.

Speaker: Leon Sebastian Behle (University of Göttingen)

17 Beyond the dyadic framework: Acoustic imaging for multi-individual vocal dynamics in social animals.

In animal societies, acoustic communication is deeply connected to group behaviour and social network structure, coordinating group decisions and maintaining relationships. Yet research on social behaviour and vocal communication has often proceeded in parallel, largely because it is difficult to track interactions while simultaneously attributing vocalisations to multiple nearby individuals. Here, we evaluate the performance of an acoustic camera (array-based acoustic imaging) for resolving multi-individual vocal dynamics in a family group of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). The system’s spatial, spectral and temporal resolution enabled separation of overlapping calls and localisation of callers even when individuals were in close proximity. Specifically, the camera (i) disentangled concurrent marmoset vocalisations, (ii) resolved callers separated by as little as 3 cm, and (iii) correctly assigned 94% of vocalisations to a single individual. These results indicate that acoustic imaging can capture within-group vocal interactions at fine spatial and temporal scales, providing a tractable bridge between social network analysis and communication research.

Speaker: Dr Jorge Cabrera-Moreno (Universität Zürich)

18 Capturing naturalistic behaviour in marmoset groups

Studying freely moving animals, as opposed to restrained or head-fixed animals, provides an excellent opportunity to study a wider range of complex, natural behaviours and interactions in neuroscience beyond the confines of the traditional laboratory setting. Advances in motion tracking technology, with the help of machine learning, are beginning to make the study of natural behaviours possible without the need for laborious hand-scoring or restrictive head positions. Here, we describe a motion-tracking setup for a marmoset home cage, which records daily behaviour and interactions. An array of sixteen cameras record a group of marmosets moving freely in their home cage, without physical markers. Recording several hours of video per day creates a rich but very large dataset, which would require a tremendous amount of labour to analyse by hand. We are therefore utilising emerging machine-learning techniques to extract pose and behaviour information. From video footage, we will first extract three-dimensional pose information from multiple animals, as well as identity information, using machine learning approaches. We will further use machine learning to identify instances of defined behaviours without the need to label entire datasets manually. This approach, combined with wireless neural recorders, will facilitate large-scale analysis of complex and natural behaviours and their neuronal basis with less restrictive experimental setups.

Speaker: Ann Thompson (UYST)

19 Carry-over effect of artificial light at night on daytime mating activity in an ecologically important detritivore, the amphipod Gammarus pulex

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a growing environmental problem influencing the fitness of individuals through effects on their physiology and behaviour. Research on animals has primarily focused on effects on behaviour during the night, whereas less is known about effects transferred to daytime. Here, we investigated in the lab the impact of ALAN on the mating behaviour of an ecologically important freshwater amphipod, Gammarus pulex, during both daytime and nighttime. We manipulated the presence of ALAN and the intensity of male–male competition for access to females, and found the impact of ALAN on mating activity to be stronger during daytime than during nighttime, independent of male–male competition. At night, ALAN only reduced the probability of precopula pair formation, while during the daytime, it both decreased general activity and increased the probability of pair separation after pair formation. Thus, ALAN reduced mating success in G. pulex not only directly, through effects on mating behaviour at night, but also indirectly through a carry-over effect on daytime activity and the ability to remain in precopula. These results emphasise the importance of considering delayed effects of ALAN on organisms, including daytime activities that can be more important fitness determinants than nighttime activities.

Speaker: Mr Anirban Ganguly (University of Helsinki)

20 Choice-predictive biases in dorsal premotor cortex and parietal reach region during multi-attribute value-based decisions

Where in the brain is a decision made? Previous studies showed that activity in prefrontal areas reflects information pertinent to the ongoing decision, suggesting that decision-making is part of the frontal lobe’s executive functions. However, decision-related neural modulation is also shown in sensorimotor areas. Does this imply that these areas are all causally involved in the decision processes? Here, we investigated the causal role of dorsal premotor (PMd) and parietal reach region (PRR) using a multi-attribute decision task. Two male monkeys were presented with reach targets whose reward value was indicated by two attributes - its brightness (”bottom-up” feature) and its orientation (“top-down” feature). We predicted that the latency of choice-predictive activities in PMd and PRR would reflect their causal role, especially when the attributes are in conflict. The population analysis of early tuned cells showed 1) both PMd and PRR predicted choices before action execution, 2) PMd often preceded PRR, and 3) conflict resolution between equally-valued choices was primarily driven by biases in baseline activity in PMd, but not PRR. The neural space analysis on the entire population showed 4) directional tuning in PRR preceded PMd when the choice was based on the bottom-up feature, whereas the opposite was true when the choice was based on the top-down feature. Our results suggest that value-based decisions are made at the individual attribute levels in a distributed decision network that includes PMd and PRR, as opposed to at an abstract, fully integrated value space exclusively in the prefrontal cortex.

Speaker: Ayuno Nakahashi (DPZ)

21 Communication Helps Politically Aligned Groups Sustain Resources Together, but Democrats Benefit More than Republicans when Outnumbered.

Introduction
Intensifying partisan animosity poses a significant challenge to sustainability. This research explored whether non-binding communication through numerical pledges of intended behaviour (cheap-talk) could foster cooperative sustainability across politically aligned and mis-aligned groups in an online experimental common-pool resource (CPR) dilemma.

Methodology
American Democrats and Republicans (N = 324 individuals) were randomly allocated to politically homogeneous groups of four. Each group was assigned a communication condition (cheap-talk versus no cheap-talk) and received information manipulating their perceived group political alignment as politically aligned (intra-group condition with all members politically aligned), politically mixed/balanced (inter-group condition with 50:50 political split), or politically mis-aligned (inter-group minority condition where the three other players are members of the other political group).

Results
Sustaining the CPR was challenging for both Democrats and Republicans. Cheap-talk allowed Democrats and Republicans to more effectively sustain their CPR when interacting in politically aligned groups. Cheap-talk also allowed Democrats and Republicans to sustain their CPR when interacting in politically mis-aligned groups, with Democrats showing a stronger effect than Republicans. In politically mixed groups, cheap-talk only had a minimal effect on sustainability.

Conclusion
Our findings demonstrate that both Democrats and Republicans favour interactions with politically aligned groups when sustaining CPRs. However, Democrats more effectively harnessed the cooperation-enhancing effects of communication to cooperate with politically mis-aligned groups when they themselves were politically outnumbered. Overall, our findings suggest that enabling people to express their intentions through simple communication can help bridge political divides, making it easier to work together on shared environmental goals.

Speaker: Richardt Hansen (University of Dundee)

22 Confidence over competence: Real-time integration of social information in human continuous perceptual decision-making

Human perception is susceptible to social influences. To determine if and how individuals opportunistically integrate real-time social information about noisy stimuli into their judgment, we tracked perceptual accuracy and confidence in social (dyadic) and non-social (solo) settings using a novel continuous perceptual report (CPR) task with peri-decision wagering. In the dyadic setting, most participants showed a higher degree of perceptual confidence. In contrast, average accuracy did not improve compared to solo performance. Underlying these net effects, partners in the dyad exhibit mutual convergence of accuracy and confidence, benefitting less competent or confident individuals, at the expense of the better performing partner. In conclusion, real-time social information asymmetrically shapes human perceptual decision-making, with most dyads expressing more confidence without a matching gain in overall competence.

Speaker: Felix Schneider (DPZ)

23 Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making

Real-life social interactions often unfold continuously and involve dynamic cooperation and competition, yet most studies rely on discrete games that do not capture the adaptive and graded nature of continuous sensorimotor decisions. To address this gap, we developed the Cooperation-Competition Foraging game — a novel, ecologically grounded paradigm in which pairs of participants (dyads) navigate a continuous shared space under face-to-face visibility, deciding in real-time to collect rewarded targets either individually or jointly. Dyads spontaneously converged on distinct stable strategies along the cooperation-competition spectrum, forming three similarly sized groups: cooperative, intermediate, and competitive. Despite the behavioral complexity, our computational model, which incorporated travel path minimization, sensorimotor communication, and recent choice history, predicted dyadic decisions with 87% accuracy, and linked prediction certainty with ensuing dynamics of spatiotemporal coordination. Further modeling revealed how sensorimotor factors, such as movement speed and skill, shape distinct strategies and payoffs. Crucially, we quantify the cost of cooperation, demonstrating that in many dyads prosocial tendencies outweigh the individual benefits of exploiting skill advantages. Our versatile framework provides a predictive, mechanistic account of how social and embodied drivers promote the emergence of dynamic cooperation and competition, and offers rigorous metrics for investigating the neural basis of naturalistic social interactions, and for linking personality traits to distinct strategies.

Speaker: Darius Lewen (MPSF)

24 Cooperative breeding and sleeping associations in grey mouse lemurs

The ecological constraint hypothesis proposes that ecological conditions, e.g. limited breeding resources, constrain dispersal and solitary breeding, promoting cooperative breeding. The impact of climate and weather variables on cooperative plural breeding, where all females in a group can reproduce, are unclear. Female grey mouse lemurs, Microcebus murinus, forage solitarily at night, and sleep either solitarily or socially with kin; hence, they breed solitarily or cooperatively during breeding seasons. We used sleeping nest data to assess the effects of density, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, temperature and precipitation on cooperative and solitary breeding in a wild grey mouse lemur population from 2017 to 2021 in Kirindy, Madagascar. We recorded 2192 social and 2107 solitary sleeping observations of 169 females. As density increased, the likelihood of breeding cooperatively and the number of females per nest increased. These results did not support the ecological constraint hypothesis, since most nests were unoccupied. An increase in density may have increased the number of kin in the population, facilitating cooperative breeding. The likelihood of cooperative breeding and the number of females per nest increased with el Niño and la Niña events compared to normal phases, and there was no significant difference between el Niño and la Niña events. Temperature and precipitation did not significantly influence the likelihood of breeding cooperatively and the number of females per nest. These results suggest that female grey mouse lemurs breed cooperatively when environmental uncertainty increases. Our research shows that breeding strategies and social dynamics in grey mouse lemurs adapt to environmental factors.

Speaker: Luise Kuo (Georg August Universität Göttingen & Deutsches Primatenzentrum GmbH)

25 Cross-Cultural Variations in Conversational AI Use for Elderly Mental Health Support: A Systematic Review

Keywords: Conversational AI [1], elder mental health [2], psychological well-being [5].
The global surge in aging populations and digital mental health interventions underscores the urgency to understand how cultural preferences shape the adoption and efficacy of conversational AI tools for supporting older adults’ mental well-being. This systematic review aims to (1) examine how cultural factors influence the perception, usability, and acceptance of conversational AI tools among older adults for mental health support; (2) identify design features and implementation strategies that enhance or hinder user engagement across cultural contexts; and (3) highlight gaps in current research and propose culturally adaptive recommendations for AI-based mental health interventions. Guided by the PRISMA 2020 framework. This review will synthesize evidence from 2015 to 2025 from Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The search strategy includes terms such as “conversational AI,” “chatbots,” “virtual assistants,” “mental health,” “older adults,” “cross-cultural,” “user acceptance,” and “psychological well-being.” Inclusion criteria encompass peer-reviewed articles, empirical studies, pilot trials, and qualitative evaluations involving adults aged 60+ using AI-driven conversational agents for mental health outcomes. Data extraction & quality assessment will follow standardized protocols, with findings narratively synthesized to identify cultural divergences and design gaps. A key contribution is the identification of cultural blind spots in existing AI solutions, which are predominantly designed around Western cultural norms, potentially limiting trust, engagement, and effectiveness among non-Western or culturally diverse older populations. Through this study we propose culturally adaptive design recommendations to foster equitable, effective conversational AI solutions supporting the well-being of aging communities worldwide.

Speaker: Niluka Hettige (University of Colombo , Sri Lanka)

26 Curious choices: How explore-exploit trade-offs shape preschoolers’ decision-making

Prior research suggests that modal thought emerges around age four. For instance, when confronted with one certain and two uncertain options (3-cups-task), preschoolers choose randomly. Apparently, they fail to represent mutually exclusive possibilities and do not consider their uncertainty. This contrasts with findings that already 3-year-olds provide accurate metacognitive judgments about their own uncertainty. Given this divergence, the current study investigates whether poor performance in the 3-cups-task reflects immature modal cognition or whether other factors, like curiosity, mask children’s decision-making in uncertain situations.
Curiosity, conceptualized as a metacognitive feeling that is triggered by and functions to reduce uncertainty, plays a significant role in early cognition. Particularly young children benefit from curiosity-driven learning and engage in exploration, often preferring to acquire new information over immediate rewards. Hence, it is possible that their “irrational” choices in the 3-cups-task mirror an inherent trade-off between exploiting known rewards and exploring uncertain options rather than cognitive limitations.
To test this, the current study aims to resolve the potential explore-exploit trade-off within the 3-cups-task: Participants (3- and 4-year-olds, N = 68) made two choices, indicating (via stickers) which option they wanted to explore and which they wanted to exploit. Contrary to our hypotheses, preliminary results (n = 32) reveal no clear benefit from separating the two choices; children exploited the certain option only about 40% of the time. Data collection is ongoing, but this project raises broader questions regardless the final results, highlighting the complicated role of curiosity in children’s sophisticated decision-making in interaction with uncertainty.

Speaker: Marlene Meyer (UXGN)

27 Detecting Mental Fatigue in Interactive Settings: Pupil Dynamics and Motor Performance in a Simulated Human-Robot Collaboration Task

Mental fatigue is a common challenge in human–robot collaboration (HRC), yet it often remains undetected until performance failures occur. To support adaptive systems that respond proactively to user states, this study examined behavioral and pupillometric indicators of mental fatigue in a controlled yet ecologically valid scenario mimicking HRC. Forty‑one participants completed either a low‑ or high‑load version of a fatigue‑inducing working‑memory task (two‑back vs. time‑load dual‑back), followed by a joystick‑based drag‑and‑drop task requiring continuous motor control, while pupil size was recorded.
The high‑load task induced stronger cognitive strain, reflected in steeper declines in accuracy and reduced task‑evoked pupil responses. In the subsequent motor task, previously fatigued participants moved objects faster but with less placement precision—indicating a fatigue-related speed-accuracy trade-off. Pupil constriction and re dilation amplitudes decreased over time, suggesting declining task demands with growing familiarity. Notably, larger late-trial pupil re-dilations predicted faster reaction times, linking phasic arousal (indicated by larger pupil responses) to improved performance once the task was learned.
These findings highlight pupil dynamics as a marker of mental fatigue that precedes overt performance decline. Integrating pupillometry with fine‑grained behavioral measures can support adaptive HRC systems that monitor cognitive state in real time and adjust assistance to sustain safety in collaborative environments. By bridging neuroscience, psychology, and robotics, this interdisciplinary approach advances our understanding of how cognitive states influence—and are influenced by—dynamic human-machine interactions.

Speaker: Esther Anna Semmelhack (Department for Cognition, Emotion and Behavior)

28 Exploring Curiosity: A Multidimensional Investigation during Reading

How does curiosity unfold during reading? Although curiosity is central to how people seek out and engage with information, its role in everyday reading remains underexplored. In this study, we adapted the classic trivia paradigm to a naturalistic reading task: participants read 72 short, thematically diverse German texts from different domains and rated them on seven dimensions, including curiosity and prior knowledge (before reading), interest, desire to know more, perceived complexity, novelty, and surprise (after reading). An exploratory factor analysis revealed two key latent factors in the ratings explaining 56% of the variance in the data: curiosity (encompassing curiosity, desire to learn more, and interest) and novelty (including novelty and surprise). Variance partitioning showed that curiosity varied by participant, domain, and text. Remarkably, strong participant–domain and participant–text interactions emerged, highlighting systematic individual differences in readers’ domain and text-topic engagement. These differences were less pronounced for novelty. Finally, using linear mixed-effects models, we found that participants reported greater curiosity for topics at moderate levels of complexity and individual prior knowledge, supporting an inverted U-shaped relationship, consistent with complexity-based theories. Conversely, interest increased linearly with novelty, supporting novelty-based theories. Higher curiosity was associated with lower reading fluency (based on text reading times), while prior knowledge improved fluency, suggesting an interplay between engagement and efficiency. Together, these results highlight the multifaceted nature of curiosity, differentially influenced by both stimulus features and individual differences, as well as by their interactions.

Speaker: Giulia Zantonello (Department of Educational Psychology, Georg-August Universität Göttingen)

29 Exploring exploration; a quick review of definitions

Exploration plays a central role in the interaction of organisms with their environment, and it is studied across disciplines. However, interdisciplinary exchange might be hampered by different understandings of exploration. Are researchers indeed referring to the same underlying process when investigating exploration? Differences might be due to operational versus conceptual definitions. While limits of what can feasibly be tested might give rise to such differences, there could also be variation due to alternative perspectives on the role information gathering and movement decisions should play in exploration. We present the results of a scoping review of definitions used in the most cited papers on exploration across life sciences. Highlighting differences that may arise among research fields, we discuss the interplay between (working) definitions, methods and interpretation of results across disciplines. By exposing differences and communalities in definitions, we hope to increase our understanding of what researchers mean by “exploration”. Ultimately, a common terminology will facilitate interdisciplinary discussions on how curiosity and exploration are connected or where they may or may not overlap.

Speaker: Dimphy van Boerdonk (University of Münster)

30 Exploring Neural Dynamics in Mental Rotation Through Time-Resolved Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Mental rotation (MR) is a crucial process that underlies our ability to spatially navigate and recognize objects despite viewing them from varying distances and viewpoints. MR competence is linked to superior sport and academic performance, and deficits can impact activities of daily living like driving. Previous work using single-pulse TMS has confirmed the causal involvement of three brain regions: left and right dorsal premotor area (LPMd and RPMd) and left superior parietal lobe (LSPL). In the present study, we aim to identify critical time windows during which these regions are essential for task performance by applying single-pulse TMS at different timepoints to the PMd and left SPL during MR. 30 right-handed participants (mean age = 23.4 years, SD = 1.7) performed a mental rotation task, where they had to determine whether two three-dimensional (3D) figures are identical despite differing orientations. TMS-induced disruption is expected to delay response times, highlighting the temporal dynamics of perceptual-motor decision processes. Preliminary results reveal that LPMD is critical at 100ms and 200ms, suggesting that it contributes to early stages of visuospatial transformation. To control for this result, we are recruiting a new right-handed participant cohort to perform the same task using their left hand. We hypothesise that LPMd involvement will remain consistent regardless of which hand is used to respond. By mapping brain-behavior relationships with high temporal resolution, our research bridges perceptual processing, decision-making, and action.

Speaker: Ms Ishita Goyal (Universitätsklinikum Würzburg)

31 Exploring the Inner Workings and Internal Representations of Predictive Coding Networks in Comparison to Usual Feedforward Neural Networks

Predictive coding theory as a unified theory of brain formulating intelligence as a hierarchical process in which the brain builds an unsupervised world model and tries to predict the next states of the world by minimising the prediction errors. This process can be implemented in a variant of artificial neural networks, called energy-based networks or predictive coding networks, trained by a biologically plausible learning rule named prospective configuration. In each step of prospective configuration, first the neuronal activities of intermediate layers are adjusted to reflect the activities required to produce the targets and then synaptic weights of intermediate layers are adjusted to consolidate these neuronal activities. While in recent years, there is a good progress on theoretical understanding of predictive coding networks trained by prospective configuration algorithm, the inner machinery and the internal representations of these neural networks compared to usual feedforward neural networks are still unknown. This project aims to fill this gap using various interpretability techniques for vision tasks. Basically, a few recently published methods are used to measure the internal representations of predictive coding networks to compare them with usual feedforward neural networks. The project is performed by simple vision tasks such as relatively simple predictive coding networks trained on relatively simple synthesised or well-known datasets. This project is still in early phase and currently there is some preliminary results.

Speaker: Aslan Satary Dizaji (GNOI)

32 Foraging competence and scrounging tolerance enhance social relationships in a socially tolerant wild primate

Social interactions are crucial for individual health and ultimately fitness, making the choice of social partners particularly important. Previous research has shown that individuals who succeed in foraging tasks often receive increased affiliation from group members. Similarly, in a social learning context, individuals who possess valuable information become more attractive social partners. Thus, an individual’s role in a foraging context–specifically, whether it is a successful producer–can influence its social relationships. Therefore, we examined the interplay between social learning, producing and scrounging behavior, and social relationships in four groups of wild redfronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons). We conducted an open diffusion experiment with food boxes that required animals to learn one of two techniques to open them. 27 out of 29 individuals participated in the experiment, 26 interacted with the boxes and 16 learned to open them. Initial success was better predicted by use of individual than social information, i.e., manipulating the food boxes vs. time spent watching successful individuals or scrounging. Older males were less successful than females. Scrounging occurred in about 26% of events, with on average 1.3 individuals scrounging. The technique used, age and sex of the producer did not predict scrounging frequency. Learners and males scrounged more often than non-learners and females. Among learners, less successful individuals scrounged more often and this effect was more pronounced in males. More successful individuals and those that were scrounged more often received more affiliative behavior. Thus, cognitive skills and scrounging tolerance may strengthen social relationships in this primate species.

Speaker: Elif Karakoc (DPZ)

33 Freely behaving is not randomly behaving: Hidden vigilance states in naturalistic foraging

When animals forage together, they should remain alert to others and environmental uncertainties. In monkeys, this commonly embodies as looking at others and around while manually foraging. We asked how do monkeys navigate the trade-off between maintaining vigilance and acquiring food? To address this question, we designed a dyadic foraging task for freely moving rhesus macaques in which they were free to search for food on a floor grid of woodchip piles. We quantified three types of actions: foraging, looking at the partner, and vigilance scan, defined as a side-to-side head movement while looking up. By computing an action transition matrix, we found that foraging and vigilance scans often follow block-like patterns as each of them occurs repeatedly before the animal performs any of the two other actions. This raises the question of whether the high probability of an action repeating is due to the cost of switching to other actions or does it reflect the influence of a sustained internal state that biases behavior? We employed a Hidden Markov Model in which the emitting actions in each hidden state are predicted using a generalized linear model (GLM-HMM). The fitted HMM-GLM revealed that states were stable, with a higher probability of staying in a state than switching. While in one state, the probability of foraging was the highest, in another, looking at the partner was most probable. These results suggest that our model was able to infer hidden states of vigilance, influencing the trade-off between maintaining vigilance and acquiring food.

Speakers: Ms Sara Ahmadi Majd (University of Goettingen/ DPZ), Dr Zahra Yousefi Darani (University of Goettingen/ DPZ)

34 Fulfilling Curiosity with AI: Interacting with ChatGPT Magnifies the Illusion of Explanatory Depth

The illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) is a cognitive bias in which people overrate their ability to explain phenomena. It manifests as the gap between a self-rating of explanatory skill and a later self-rating of the explanation produced. Experiments show that searching the Internet for explanations increases IOED. We tested whether interacting with an AI-chatbot has the same influence. University students (N = 102) answered four general-knowledge questions (e.g., “How do zippers work?”). For every question, a detailed supplementary material with an explanation was pre-generated with ChatGPT-4.5. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: GPT (they questioned a customized ChatGPT that returned the pre-generated materials), no-GPT (they read the same materials on screen without knowing their origin), and control (no materials provided). After reading, participants rated (7-point scale) how good an explanation they could potentially give (pre-rating). They then wrote their explanations and rated them again (post-rating). A LMEM (with GPT/pre-rating as intercept) predicting ratings from condition × time with random intercepts for participants and items and random slopes for time confirmed a robust IOED. Crucially, the interaction was significant: the GPT group showed the largest pre–post decline, bigger than no-GPT (β = 0.54, se = 0.25, t = 2.21, p = 0.030) and control (β = 0.90, se = 0.25, t = 3.61, p < .001). Thus, interacting with ChatGPT magnified IOED beyond simply reading the same AI-generated texts. Moreover, explanations written in the GPT condition were significantly shorter than those in the no-GPT group.

Speaker: Ivan Aslanov (Universidad de Chile)

35 How do children leverage exploration with advice seeking?

Children learn both through exploration and by seeking guidance from more knowledgeable and helpful others, with successful learning requiring leveraging these two different ways of acquiring information. While a large body of work shows that even young children are adaptive in the way they search for information and in their decisions about whom to ask for advice, there is little work examining children's adaptiveness in choosing the mode of learning, or what drives these decisions across development.
We investigated how children ages 7-13 made decisions about when to seek advice versus explore independently in a gamified learning task. Children learned how one continuous variable mapped onto another as a function of a binary context, and were then tested using a prediction task. Using a 2×2 between-subjects design, we manipulated (1) whether children could consult a knowledgeable adviser during learning, and (2) whether they received an explicit performance goal before learning. The adviser provided accurate mappings that were equally informative to self-generated samples, allowing us to isolate a priori preferences for guided versus independent learning. Data collection is ongoing (N = 27/100 completed; expected to be finished by October). Pilot results (N=22) revealed that children strategically sought advice when it carried no opportunity cost and following trials with larger prediction errors. Soliciting advice encouraged more exploration of the stimulus space and lead to lower prediction errors at test, while the explicit goal setting improved performance when the adviser was not available.

Speaker: Oana Stanciu (TUM)

36 Information gain and caregivers’ interactive behavior as drivers of infants’ visual attention indexing curiosity

According to the learning progress theory of curiosity, infants’ attention is guided by information in the environment. Yet, the role of social interaction and, in particular, the caregiver’s behavior in interaction with information provided by the environment remains unclear. The aim of this combined behavioral and computational modeling project was to investigate infants’ visual attention to information gain in an interactive context.
80 9-month-old infants (m=276 days; 39 girls) and their caregivers (68 mothers) took part in the experiment (preregistered at https://osf.io/gd6cb). The dyad sat at a table watching toys appear in one of the three boxes in front of them. Half of the caregivers were instructed not to interfere during the experiment while the other half was encouraged to interact with their infants as they would at home. For each trial, information gain (i.e., based on where the toy appears) was calculated as Kullback-Leibler divergence.
Based on previous research, we hypothesized that infants monitor and update the probability distribution of toy appearances in different locations. A computational Bayesian model was built to determine which factors play a role in infants’ looking behavior as a proxy for visual attention. It takes into account information gain, presence or absence of scaffolding from the caregiver's side, time passed from the start of the experiment and differing attention spans of infants, represented hierarchically in the model. All data are collected, and first results will be presented.

Speaker: Olesia Moiseenko (GNOI)

37 Information transfer during dyadic interactions in perceptual decision-making

Decision making in social contexts requires integrating sensory evidence over time from both stimulus and social sources. While prior work shows social settings affect perceptual accuracy and confidence, it remains unclear how real-time social feedback modulates these factors.

We analyzed a continuous perceptual decision-making task where participants reported the perceived direction of motion (accuracy) in a random dot pattern (RDP) and their confidence. Signal-to-noise ratio (coherence) varied over time, and participants’ payoffs were independent. Participants had access to two stimulus features (motion direction, coherence) and two behavioral features of their partner (accuracy, confidence). Using Transfer Entropy (TE), we quantified information flow from these sources.

Subjects tended to interact via the same behavioral dimension: 90% of participants’ accuracy was influenced by partners’ accuracy, and 38% of participants’ confidence by partners’ confidence. From stimulus sources, subjects accuracy received information from motion direction of the RDP in all participants, and confidence by coherence in 99%. To link these patterns to task performance, we applied a Bayesian linear regression.

This analysis showed that greater TE from motion direction ([0.421, 0.766], 94% CI), coherence ([0.005, 0.343], 94% CI), and partners’ accuracy ([0.49, 0.78], 94% CI) predicted better performance. Model comparison revealed that including both stimulus and social information outperformed stimulus-only models (as indicated by the ELPD, estimated with LOO-CV).

These results suggest that even without enforced cooperation or competition, participants integrate both stimulus and social cues in perceptual decisions. Moreover, real-time social feedback selectively modulates accuracy and confidence via matching behavioral dimensions between partners.

Speaker: Juan Pablo Fiorenza (Department of Data-driven Analysis of Biological Networks, Georg-August Universität, Göttingen)

38 Information-Theoretic Resilience Across Neural Network Topologies

Understanding how individuals recover function after stress is a central question in resilience research. From a neuroscience perspective, identifying neural circuits that promote resilience could reveal whether resilience is a universal principle across scales.

We address this question by studying spiking neural networks subject to disturbances. Prior work in similar settings has focused on robustness (the preservation of function after attack) and its correlation with structural graph metrics. However, resilience, defined as the recovery of network function over time, remains less explored. Here, we quantify network function by tracking neuronal activity with information-theoretic measures, such as entropy and mutual information (MI), computed before and after disturbances. We evaluate functional metrics including (i) the return of entropy to its pre-attack baseline and (ii) the MI between pre-attack and relaxed post-attack activity patterns.

Preliminary analyses show a trade-off between the two recovery readouts; MI-based recovery is negatively associated with entropy recovery. Across generated network structures, recovering pre-attack information patterns often coincides with reduced population variability, thereby lowering information capacity. Structurally, MI recovery increases with global efficiency and transitivity but decreases with small-worldness; entropy recovery shows the opposite pattern.

Both social and physical interactions with the environment shape neural population dynamics and their impact has been characterised by information-theoretic measures. We view stressors, injuries, or clinical disorders, as perturbations to the underlying neural network. Our resilience assessment aims to link network structure and mechanisms to functional outcomes that impact behaviour.

Speaker: Dr Mauricio A. Diaz (Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research)

39 Learning Task-Driven Scan Paths with Log‑Polar Foveated Networks

Understanding how an observer decides where to look is central to both human-vision research and machine perception. We tackle this question by training a neural network that produces artificial scan paths while performing tasks such as classification, visual search, and counting. At each fixation, the network receives a log-polar, foveated view of the image, which retains high-resolution detail at the point of gaze and compresses the periphery. This process mirrors the acuity of the retina. A controller proposes the next fixation, and a task solver integrates the resulting glimpses to answer the query. The controller can be trained with standard back-propagation or, in an alternative configuration, entirely with reinforcement learning (RL).

On an MNIST-derived benchmark that places digits on a 224 × 224 canvas with distractor strokes, the model matches full-vision accuracy (99%) when the midpoint of the target digit is supplied as an oracle fixation. The same accuracy is maintained when the controller learns its own fixation sequence, and RL offers a small additional benefit. Under similar perceptual constraints the model achieves 54 % top-1 accuracy on ImageNet. Qualitative inspection shows that the learned fixations cluster around semantically informative regions. Ongoing experiments add an explicit novelty reward to study how curiosity incentives reshape exploration behaviour and downstream performance.

Speaker: Valentin Hassler (UMIN)

40 Longitudinal Development of Curiosity-Based Learning across Childhood and Adolescence: The Influence of Metacognition and Agency

Curiosity motivates to investigate, gain knowledge, and adjust to uncertain situations. Curiosity-driven learning has been associated with enhanced memory and comprehension, establishing it a vital aspect of cognitive growth. Agency, the feeling of having control over one’s learning process, might amplify curiosity advantages by enabling learners to guide their own exploration. Metacognitive monitoring also plays a role in curiosity by supporting the evaluation of uncertainty and learning progress. To date, little is known about the ways in which these abilities interact to support curiosity and curiosity-based learning across childhood and adolescence. The present study combines behavioural, experiential, and physiological measures in a longitudinal design to investigate how curiosity, metacognition, and agency support memory development in children between 10 and 14 years (planned N = 200). Participants will be assessed at two time points approximately one year apart. Experimental paradigms will assess self-reported curiosity levels, exploratory behaviour, and information prediction errors (IPEs). These experimental paradigms will vary on the degree to which participants can actively choose what to explore or learn next. We will combine retrospective confidence judgments, with questionnaires and “think-aloud” protocols to assess metacognitive development. Daily sampling for one-week will assess short-term changes in curiosity, affect and self-efficacy at three timepoints across the year. We expect that children will improve in curiosity-based learning with increasing IPE-effects over time, and that metacognition and agency will positively influence curiosity-based learning. Together this study aims to clarify how curiosity-based learning develops in childhood across time and methods.

Speaker: Billur Yaran (University of Trier)

41 No transfer between object and picture discrimination learning in Guinea baboons (Papio papio)

In animal cognition research, the use of touchscreens has increased in recent years. Compared to classical tasks, computerized testing allows for high stimulus control and high temporal resolution, minimizing confounding effects that might occur during interaction with an experimenter, and enables researchers to test a large variety of cognitive tasks in standardized ways. Knowing how nonhuman subjects represent test stimuli is important for drawing conclusions from obtained data as well as for the selection of appropriate stimuli and research procedures. Fagot and colleagues (2001) propose three modes of picture processing: The independent processing describes that subjects perceive no representational relationship between object and picture; in the confusion mode, subjects do not perceive a difference between object and picture; and the equivalence mode describes that subjects understand the symbolic relationship that exists between object and picture. To investigate picture processing in our test subjects, we examined whether Guinea baboons (Papio papio) (n = 8) can transfer a learned discrimination between real objects and their photographs on a touchscreen, and vice versa. Preliminary results found no evidence for a learning transfer between the object and picture conditions. This observation indicates that Guinea baboons do not recognize the objects in the pictures, which aligns with the independent processing mode. Interestingly, discrimination learning was faster with real objects compared to pictures on the touchscreen. These findings not only indicate that Guinea baboons do not naturally understand pictures as a depiction of an object, but also inform how learning patterns may differ across experimental modalities.

Speaker: Judit J. Stolla (1 German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany; 2 Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute, Department for Primate Cognition, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany)

42 Pallium-encoded valence-specific chemosensory amplification of eye-body coordination in larval zebrafish

Coordinated eye-body movements are essential for adaptive behavior, yet little is known about how multisensory input, particularly chemosensory cues, shapes this coordination. Using our enhanced Fish-on-Chips optofluidic platform, we uncovered complex dynamics in how larval zebrafish coordinate saccadic eye movements with tail flips. Under baseline conditions, spontaneous tail flips dynamically align with saccades in frequency and direction for coordinated turns. Chemosensory valence further modulates this coordination: death-associated cues intensify both the strength and frequency of coupled saccade-tail flips during turns, whereas food-related cues promote forward gliding without altering saccade coupling. Concurrent brain-wide neuronal imaging reveals that the zebrafish pallium represents the transformation of aversive valence into enhanced saccade-tail coordination, with stronger coupling associated with higher pallium activation. These findings uncover the neural basis by which chemosensory inputs of different valences distinctly regulate eye-body coordination to drive adaptive locomotion in a developing vertebrate, offering insights into principles of sensory-motor integration.

Speaker: Kwun Hei Samuel Sy (UBM1)

43 Prosociality meta-analysis in non-human mammals and birds

Prosocial behavior is defined as any behavior that is intended to benefit another individual. This behavior does not need to be costly. Results of individual studies are heterogenous, obscuring major effects. We conducted a phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis in order to investigate how much variation in non-human mammalian and avian prosocial behavior can be explained by the cooperative breeding hypothesis and by different experimental approaches. We examined if variation in prosocial behavior in the prosocial choice task can be predicted by the extent of allomaternal care and techniques. We calculated Hedge’s g as the effect size to compare the outcome of conditions for the actor and the recipient for the comparison of mutualistic (1/1) vs selfish (1/0). We compared the test condition, i.e. partner present, to different controls conditions, i.e. partner absent or random chance. We classified the experimental design according to the techniques used in the experiment (prosocial choice task: pulling, touch, token). We conducted meta-regressions to assess the influence of the test conditions, allomaternal care and techniques on the 136 test and 49 control effect sizes from 45 studies. Actors chose the 1/1 option more than the 1/0 option in the test than in the control and more than by random chance, and these results support that non-human mammals and avian actors behaved prosocially. The extent of allomaternal care and techniques did not significantly affect the effect sizes, which did not support the cooperative breeding hypothesis nor differences in outcomes based on experimental techniques.

Speaker: Sacha Christoph Engelhardt (University of Göttingen/Deutsches Primatenzentrum)

44 Sacred Place Attachment and Sustainable Climate Behaviors in South Asia: A Conceptual Approach

This conceptual paper examines how sacred place attachment influences sustainable climate behaviors and human interaction with the environment in South Asia. The main objective is to explore the emotional, spiritual, and cultural connections that communities form with sacred and historical landscapes, and how these attachments foster pro-environmental action. Drawing on theories from environmental psychology, place attachment, and the theory of planned behavior, the paper uses a conceptual framework to analyze how rituals, values, and embodied practices tied to culturally significant places shape attitudes and behaviors toward environmental protection. Illustrative references are drawn from Buddhist, Hindu, and multi-faith heritage sites across the region. These sacred landscapes—often situated in ecologically vulnerable or politically sensitive zones—are proposed as motivators for climate-conscious practices, intergenerational care, and place-based sustainability. The methodology involves a theoretical synthesis of existing literature, integrated with region-specific insights to explore the links between identity, culture, and environmental engagement. The study contributes to the conference theme by highlighting how place-based spirituality can serve as an emotionally resonant driver of collective climate action. It also considers the challenges of preserving sacred sites amid climate threats and social change. This approach invites interdisciplinary dialogue and offers culturally sensitive pathways for strengthening community interaction with the environment.
Keywords: Sacred place attachment, environmental psychology, climate behavior, cultural ecosystem services, heritage, and sustainability.

Speaker: Niluka Hettige

45 Social Context shapes behavioral dynamics of foraging decisions in freely moving rhesus macaques

Foraging animals continuously assess their environment regarding types and locations of food sources. During social foraging, individuals must additionally account for the positions and potential actions of conspecifics, integrating social dynamics into their foraging decisions. Here we test how rhesus macaques (macaca mulatta) integrate information about a conspecific’s actions in their own action planning while foraging freely in an experimentally controlled setting (“Exploration Room”). We hypothesized that monkeys would dynamically coordinate their foraging patterns in time and space, rather than splitting the territory, to maximize foraging success while minimizing conflict potential. To test our hypothesis, we offered to the animals a variety of feeding options in a shared space and tracked their full-body movements and interactions.
In line with our hypothesis, we found that the monkeys adopted a dynamic coordination strategy. After a few dyadic foraging sessions, they maintained a minimum distance from each other while foraging and tended to synchronize their foraging and relocation times between separate feeding stations. Additionally, we found that visual exploration of the food stations (head gaze) was indicative of where the monkey decides to go next, taking into account the partner’s current location in the room.
The observed social foraging dynamics highlight the impact of a conspecific's presence on foraging strategies in rhesus macaques, indicating that a dynamic coordination approach may be more advantageous than rigid territorial divisions in ecologically relevant environments.

Speakers: Jessica Grunwald (DPZ), Zurna Ahmed (UXGN)

46 Step by Step or Hit and Miss? Investigating Social Learning and Information Accumulation in Lemurs

Studies in nonhuman animals have shown that collective intelligence and the wisdom of the crowd are not uniquely human traits. Through social learning, animals can improve their effectiveness over time in tasks such as migration, a pattern that reflects key components of cumulative cultural evolution. However, experimental studies testing whether animals can increase effectiveness through repeated social learning opportunities remain rare. In this study, we tested whether ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) would improve their performance on a series of extractive foraging tasks through social learning and gradual information accumulation. Lemurs were tested in pairs, and after four sessions, one individual was replaced with a naive partner. This stepwise replacement allowed us to assess whether information could be retained and transmitted across successive dyads. We also tested stable dyads and solitary individuals as controls, all receiving the same tasks and an equal number of sessions. Preliminary results suggest that stable dyads performed best, while both solitary individuals and replacement dyads showed similarly poor performance. These findings indicate that Lemur catta may struggle to retain and transmit task-relevant information across changing social partners. Although ring-tailed lemurs are capable social learners, the failure to build on others’ knowledge may stem from low social tolerance in certain dyads, interrupting learning opportunities. These results underscore the role of social relationships in facilitating or constraining the expression of collective intelligence in nonhuman primates.

Speaker: Sandro Sehner (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Unit German Primate Center)

47 Stochastic model for the optimal fusion of social and sensory information in transparent interactions

Human and nonhuman primates often engage in joint activities, such as playing, hunting, and foraging, and they require the representation of both social and sensory information and their integration to guide their actions.

We present a stochastic dynamics theory and analysis framework for studying a continuous-time transparent visual game for pairs of agents we call a continuous perceptual report (CPR) task.

The CPR task is a pattern recognition task where subjects view a moving random dot pattern with time-dependent veridical direction of motion and variable coherence. The task is transparent in that each subject receives information about the current estimate of the other. The difficulty of this type of task depends on the coherence and noise level of the stimulus and on the dynamics with which the veridical direction changes.

We construct a general kernel-based linear model that can both be used to simulate the behavior of ideal model subjects and to quantify the behavior of experimentally tested agents. We present a method for estimating the kernels from measured time series, based on minimizing a cost function that is derived analytically.

Synthetic time series perfectly recovers the underlying kernel. Even for realistic duration observations, kernels are reproducible and correctly predict, as assessed by cross-validation. In addition, we derive an analytical solution to the conditional probability of one or two subjects' stimulus estimates. Using these methods and results, we present an assessment of the data demands and estimation power of this framework and use it to explore stimulus designs.

Speaker: Selma Kouaiche (CIDBN)

48 Subanesthetic ketamine restores juvenile ocular dominance plasticity in adult mouse primary visual cortex

Neuronal plasticity is a fundamental process in brain development. Understanding the mechanisms involved in it is crucial for finding solutions to neurodevelopmental disorders. To study plasticity in vivo, we used ocular dominance plasticity (ODP) in mouse primary visual cortex (V1) induced by monocular deprivation (MD). In standard-cage raised adult mice, 4 days of MD are not sufficient to induce an OD-shift, and contralateral eye input continues to dominate V1-activity. However, juvenile ODP can be restored by e.g. knock-down of PSD-95 which increases the numbers of AMPA-silent synapses in adult V1. The present study investigates the role of subanesthetic ketamine in restoring juvenile ODP in the binocular region of adult mouse V1 beyond the critical period for ODP. To image plasticity, we used intrinsic signal optical imaging. Adult standard cage mice (P58-P91) were treated with ketamine or saline before and during MD.
Our data show that adult ketamine-treated standard-cage raised mice display ODP after only 4d of MD: The ocular dominance index (ODI), which quantifies V1-activation through the ipsi- and contralateral eye, was reduced compared to before MD (0.25 to 0.06±0.049, p= 0.0052, one way ANOVA), and both eyes activated V1 equally. This ODI reduction was mediated by a decrease in contralateral eye-induced V1 activation (2.8 before MD to 1.8±0.347 after, p= 0.007, 2 way ANOVA), indicating the presence of juvenile ODP. In saline-treated mice, however, V1 remained dominated by the contralateral eye, indicative of absent ODP. Thus, subanesthetic ketamine restores juvenile ODP in adult mice.

Speakers: Zahraa Karnib (Dept. of Systems Neuroscience, University of Göttingen, Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks, Göttingen Graduate Center for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences), Prof. Siegrid Löwel (Dept. of Systems Neuroscience, University of Göttingen, Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks)

49 The Effect of Anticipated Affective Outcomes on Social Approach Avoidance

Affective facial expressions are known to bias approach-avoidance tendencies. Yet in real social interactions, the affective outcomes of approaching or avoiding others are just as relevant as the emotional cues that initially bias these actions. This raises the question of whether anticipating those social-affective consequences plays a role in shaping approach-avoidance responses.

To investigate this, we combined the response-effect compatibility paradigm with the manikin task, in which participants were instructed to approach or avoid individuals with neutral expressions. Crucially, we manipulated the mapping of each response to its affective outcome across blocks by dynamically changing the expression to either happy or angry following the response. This rendered the outcomes of approach and avoidance predictable and allowed us to test whether the anticipation of an affective consequence influences action tendencies toward social stimuli, even when the stimuli themselves carry no emotional valence initially.

Overall, approach responses toward social stimuli were faster, aligning with previous findings suggesting that positive evaluations are facilitated when stimuli are social in nature. More importantly, there was a significant interaction between action type and anticipated affective outcome. Avoidance responses were faster when the anticipated consequence was an angry facial expression, while approach responses were facilitated when the anticipated outcome was a happy expression. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive representation of affective action outcomes can be as powerful as affective stimuli in biasing approach-avoidance behavior, challenging the traditional view that affective responses are mainly driven by stimulus valence.

Speaker: Alperen Doganer (University of Göttingen)

50 The Influence of Popularity on Children's Curiosity

Curiosity can direct children’s knowledge acquisition, learning and retention. One of infants’ information-seeking strategies is social learning. While there is a wealth of literature focusing on caregiver input, the role of peers remains understudied. There is some evidence to suggest that children pick up preferences from peers but rely on adults for learning new skills. Most social influence studies have used perceptual judgement tasks which have a clear correct and incorrect answer, and adult models to establish norms, confounding the motivation behind children’s behaviour. In adults, popularity’s influence on curiosity was studied using the number of upvotes (as on Reddit) as an indicator of popularity. Inspired by this, we want to understand how popularity can influence children’s curiosity as measured by their choices and dwell times in a forced-choice tablet task. We aim to collect cross-sectional data from three-year-olds to six-year-olds to see changes across development as they begin to interact with peers in a structured context. Children will be shown two stimuli with social information (“many children looked at this!” vs “very few children looked at this!”). Additionally, we will display a scale of thumbs ups as a visual indicator of popularity. After choosing, children will see an image gradually unwarping. Pilots showed that even 3-year olds are able to discriminate between the stimuli above chance when given audio and visual cues. We hypothesise that children will choose to see the more popular stimulus, dwell longer on it and that this effect will become stronger as they age.

Speaker: Shreya Venkatesan (University of Goettingen)

51 To boldly call where no gerbil has called before? Linking personality and acoustic behavior in Mongolian gerbils

Individual differences in exploratory behavior shape how animals interact with their environment and conspecifics. To characterize such differences in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus), we assessed boldness and exploration using a series of standardized tests. With adapted versions of the open field, novel object, elevated plus maze, and dark-light box tests, we measured their overall locomotion, neophobia, and risk-taking. Using a principal component analysis, we thereby identified a range of bold and shy, as well as more or less explorative individuals.
In parallel, we are investigating whether these individual differences correlate with the individual’s acoustic behavior. Previous studies on Mongolian gerbils’ drumming behavior (stomping their hindlegs) have shown high variability between individuals, which is suggested to be related to their individual arousal levels. Therefore, differences in individuals’ acoustic signaling may reflect underlying personality traits. To assess each individual’s acoustic profile, we performed three tests which are known to reliably lead to vocalizations: the presentation of familiar olfactory cues triggers contact calls, opposite-sex encounters may elicit mating calls and drumming, and in a predator simulation gerbils may produce alarm calls and drumming.
Finally, an ongoing study aims to correlate the insights into the gerbils’ individual traits with their performance as well as learning curve in a touchscreen-based judgement bias task, thereby bridging personality research, affective neuroscience, and vocal communication.

Speaker: Saskia Sperfeld (University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Institute of Zoology)

52 Training Spiking Neural Networks via Information-Theoretic Principles

Training artificial neural networks using local learning rules remains an ongoing challenge in biologically inspired machine learning. In contrast to standard machine learning, which typically relies on global error signals and centralized optimization, the brain operates under strong locality constraints: synaptic updates depend only on information available at the neuron or synapse. Many solutions have been proposed, but they have limitations. For instance they are heuristically chosen or hard to interpret at the neuron level.

Building on the work of Kay and Philipp on coherent infomax and Makkeh on infomorphic networks, we propose a framework for training artificial spiking neural networks using local goal functions derived from information-theoretic principles. The foundation of the model is the assumption that neurons process input from functionally distinct compartments. Those compartments for example can be feedforward, feedback, and lateral inputs, each contributing differently to the neuron’s output.

By applying partial information decomposition, we decompose the information each compartment provides about the neuron's output into unique, redundant, and synergistic components. This decomposition enables each neuron to optimize a local objective that selectively enhances or suppresses specific information types.

To further increase biological plausibility, we model the neuron using leaky integrate-and-fire dynamics. The membrane serves as an additional compartment that acts as an intrinsic memory, integrating over past inputs. This extension pushes the framework toward a more realistic and interpretable model of local learning in spiking systems.
This work unifies information-theoretic principles with realistic neuronal dynamics, advancing the development of locally trainable spiking networks.

Speaker: Valentin Neuhaus (University of Göttingen)

53 Using an Interdisciplinary Approach to Explore the Impact of Interaction with Environment on Individuals’ Cognition

Establishing and maintaining positive interpersonal relationships play a significant role in human development and well-being. Even though ecology of human development explains the interactions between humans and changes in their immediate environments, human development is also influenced by the natural environment in which individuals interact. Ecoculture--the reciprocal interaction between nature and culture, individuals’ self-identification within ecocultural systems, and indigenous cultural knowledge may influence their cognition and behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new conceptual framework highlighting the significance of an interdisciplinary approach in understanding the influence of interactions with the environment on individuals’ cognition. It explores how interactions with the natural environment and with culturally significant landscapes influence cognition and behaivour. Data was collected using a qualitative approach, including a review of the literature, observations, and autoethnography. It appears that interactions with the natural environment and individuals’ cognitive and experiential relationships, positively affect their development and well-being. Certain features of the natural environment and culturally or historically significant landscapes, that offer a physical space for individuals to interact with the natural environment and to exchange their knowledge and experience with others, may influence their cognitive processes like self-perceptions, identities, thinking, and inner mastery, all of which ultimately contribute to healthy development. Hence, an interdisciplinary approach that integrates knowledge from disciplines like psychology, anthropology, ecology, and archaeology will be useful in gaining advanced knowledge of how interactions between environment and individuals affect their development and well-being.
Key words: Environment, cognition, human development, social interactions, interdisciplinary approach

Speaker: Niluka Hettige

54 Visual critical period maturation is crucial for the development and refinement of binocular vision required for predation

Visually guided prey capture is an ethologically relevant behaviour that depends on the precise integration of sensory input and motor output. Postsynaptic density proteins 95 and 93 (PSD-95/93) are signalling scaffolds of the PSD of excitatory synapses with opposing function for critical period (CP) timing: PSD-95 promotes AMPA-silent synapse maturation which terminates the CP while PSD-93 inhibits CP-closure. Binocularity develops during visual CP and fully matures before CP-closure. Despite the livelong CP-plasticity of PSD-95 knock-out (KO) mice or the precocious CP-closure of PSD-93 KO mice, these animals exhibit relatively subtle sensory phenotypes in adulthood in standard cage housing. To assess the role of PSD-95 and PSD-93 in ethologically relevant binocular visual processing, we compared prey capture behaviour in KOs and their corresponding wild-type (WT) littermates. PSD-95 KO mice exhibited profoundly impaired predatory behaviour, but improved prey localisation under monocular conditions, indicating impaired binocular integration. On the other hand, PSD-93 KO mice exhibited minor deficits; under binocular conditions, WT and PSD-93 KOs performed similarly, with impairments observed under monocular conditions. Using monocular vision, both WT- and PSD-93 KO-mice were significantly slower, travelled greater distances, and showed a lower probability of contact given an approach, indicating failure in high-precision targeting. Our results highlight that the closure of CP is required for accurate hunting with binocular but not monocular vision, whereas precocious CP-closure results in minor impairments, primarily restricted to monocular vision. These findings highlight the importance of CP-closure for proper binocular vision in an ethologically relevant task.

Speaker: Dr Livia Wilod Versprille (Department of Systems Neuroscience, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institut für Zoologie und Anthropologie, Universität Göttingen)

55 Vocal behavior under information asymmetry: the role of social dynamics and hormones

Among primates, callitrichid monkeys are the only cooperative breeders besides humans and are characterized by high social tolerance and extensive vocal behavior. In a previous study, we measured marmoset vocal activity across different contexts and observed some predictable status differences in contact and warning calls. However, results were less clear for call types used to share information about food or potential threats. Here, we test the hypothesis that an individual’s tendency to share information with another may depend on the quality of their relationship and therefore examined the connection between volubility and sociality as well as individual features such as hormonal profiles.
We recorded all possible dyads from 14 marmoset groups in an experimental setup designed to induce information asymmetry, where only one member of a dyad had access to food or an ambiguous stimulus, while the other was prevented from seeing what was happening, and both could only interact vocally. We also gathered independent data on social tolerance (co-feeding experiments) for each group and dyad in parallel to the experiment, along with hair samples to analyze long-term hormone levels (cortisol and testosterone).
We expected that dyads characterized by higher social tolerance would share more information and engage in more vocal exchanges. Moreover, individuals with higher base cortisol could be more reactive and produce more distress vocalizations when triggered by potential danger.
Our results will reveal if marmosets base their decision to share information with group members on social bond strength, and how this is embedded in their hormonal background.

Speaker: Monika Mircheva (Universität Zürich)

56 Voices of the Scavengers: Complex Communication in Rüppell’s Vultures Supports Social-Cognitive Evolution

The evolution of complex communication is thought to be shaped by the cognitive demands of social living, as proposed by the Social Complexity Hypothesis for Communicative Complexity (SCHCC). While supported in a few model taxa, its generalizability as a widespread selective pressure remains unclear. To address this, we examine an understudied, highly social species—the Rüppell's vulture—to explore how social interaction may drive communicative complexity in a non-model lineage.
We present the first systematic analysis of vocal communication in this species, using a soft clustering algorithm to quantify call structure. Our results reveal a surprisingly rich vocal repertoire, including calls linked to manipulating conspecific behavior, resolving conflict, mediating parent-offspring interactions, and other undetermined functions. Additionally, their submission calls exhibit a highly graded and combinatorial structure, which may offer an expanded vehicle to transfer individual and social information. This repertoire places Rüppell’s vultures in the upper quartile of avian vocal diversity, despite their historically presumed vocal simplicity.
By documenting complex vocal behavior in a taxon outside traditional avian models, our findings extend support for the SCHCC and establish vultures as a promising group for studying the evolutionary links between sociality, cognition, and communication. Our work contributes to a growing interdisciplinary effort—bridging behavioral biology, computational analysis, and cognition—to understand how physical and social interactions shape cognitive evolution.
This study not only broadens our knowledge of avian communication but also provides insights into the evolution of communication, highlighting the value of integrating diverse taxa and methods in cognitive research.

Speaker: Jorg Massen (Utrecht University, Animal Behaviour and Cognition group)

57 Wild grey mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus) maximise own pay-off in prosocial choice test

While many species have been shown to act prosocially by providing a benefit to conspecifics, the evolution of prosocial behaviour remains incompletely understood. Among other factors, heightened social tolerance and cooperative breeding have been proposed to facilitate prosocial behaviour. However, recent studies reported conflicting results as some cooperatively breeding species behave less prosocially than expected. Therefore, a study spanning a broader range of social and especially infant care systems is needed, in order to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary roots of prosocial behaviour. Grey mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus) are interesting in this regard because they raise their infants either cooperatively or solitarily, suggesting that they should exhibit prosocial behaviour. We tested 10 wild grey mouse lemurs in Kirindy Forest, Madagascar, in a prosocial choice test (PCT) in order to assess their prosocial tendencies. We presented individuals with four distinct tokens each representing one of the four possible reward outcomes, i.e. food for themselves, for a partner, for both or neither. In addition, we assessed the level of social tolerance by offering each dyad pieces of high value food in an arena and observing their affiliative and aggressive interactions during and after feeding. Contrary to our expectations, grey mouse lemurs showed no preference for prosocial options and instead consistently chose the outcome that exclusively benefitted themselves. These results do not support the notion that allomaternal care predicts the prevalence of prosocial behaviour.

Speaker: Tamara Isabelle Sorg (German Primate Centre, University of Göttingen)

Tuesday 14 October

Plenaries

Convener: Claudia Fichtel (Deutsches Primatenzentrum)

58 Marmosets - tuned for social interaction

Marmosets are highly social monkeys that engage in cooperative breeding. This systematic reliance on allomaternal care entails a set of behavioral affordances that are unique or particularly pronounced in comparison to other primates. I will provide an overview of mechanisms that support these intense social interactions, with a particular focus on behavioral coordination, turn-taking and cooperative signaling. From an ontogenetic perspective, I will examine the contingencies between the emergence of behavioral affordances associated with cooperative breeding and neurodevelopmental trajectories, emphasizing how these rich social inputs may tune the brain toward its prosocial adult phenotype. Given that humans also systematically rely on allomaternal care, these findings carry important implications for the evolution of human social cognition.

Speaker: Judith Burkart (University of Zurich)

From Exploration to Decision-Making

Convener: Sarah Eiteljoerge (Psychology of Language, University of Göttingen)

59 Environmental influences on early numerical development - A comparison between South Africa and the UK

Introduction: While the environment plays a critical role in shaping numerical abilities, most of our understanding stems from Western countries, which in turn creates the risk of overgeneralising. This study aimed to expand our knowledge by comparing early numerical development and environmental factors surrounding it in children from both South Africa and the UK. We hypothesised differences between the performances of both groups and between the environmental factors.

Method: 93 UK children (M = 3.67 years, SD = 0.54) and 102 South African children (M = 4.46 years, SD = 0.48) participated. Caregivers completed background, socioeconomic status (SES), and Home Math Environment (HME) questionnaires. Children were assessed on a range of symbolic and non-symbolic numerical tasks.

Results: Series of ANCOVAs showed that UK children outperformed South African children in most numerical tasks, F(1,191)=9.31, p>0.01, largely supporting our hypothesis. Groups were also significantly different in all three questionnaires F(1,145)=15.9, p<0.05. Further regression analyses showed that age, caregiver expectations and multilingualism were the most influential in UK children’s performance, although they had a limited impact in South Africa. This aligns with prior research suggesting weak associations between tested environmental factors and numerical performance in Majority World contexts.

Conclusion: These findings highlight cross-cultural differences in early numeracy and emphasise the need for caution when generalising environmental influences. More research in underrepresented regions is crucial to uncover culturally and contextually relevant factors shaping numerical development globally.

Speaker: Elizaveta Ivanova (University of Surrey)

Cross-cultural_Ivanova.pdf

60 Children’s social-information seeking

Research shows that young children are “naive psychologists”, adept at understanding and navigating the social world. However, much of this work portrays them as passive recipients of information about other agents. When such information is not available, children may leverage their competences for active learning, exploration, and hypothesis-testing to acquire it. We report two studies which test whether pre- and elementary-school-aged children can select informative observations about novel agents and interaction partners.
In Study 1, 3- to 7-year-old children (data collection ongoing; current n = 36, planned n = 80) are introduced to animated alien characters, and asked to answer questions about their goals and traits. To do so, children can watch one of two video clips: one depicts a scenario that is likely to yield the answer to the question, the other is underinformative or confounded. We assess whether children select the relatively more informative video.
In Study 2, we tested whether 6- to 12-year-old children (n = 97) rationally seek information about an interaction partner’s generosity. Children played an economic game with a puppet, who had previously made self- or other-benefiting allocation decisions. Children could choose which decision outcomes to reveal, with some decisions being more informative about how highly the partner valued them. We found that children’s selections fit the predictions from a normative Bayesian model of optimal information search (Quillien, 2023).
Together, these studies examine children’s active learning in the social domain, and shed light on how children systematically gather evidence to learn about others.

Speaker: Laura Schlingloff-Nemecz (Technical University of Munich)

Children's social-information seeking (Göttingen, 12.10.25).pptx

61 Parent Speech in Free Play Is Guided by Infant Attention, but Organised by Object Familiarity

Language acquisition relies on successful coordination of infant attention and parent speech. While infants’ exploration frequently guides both partners’ focus of attention during free play, parent speech has been shown to extend infants’ attention towards already fixated objects. So far, little is known about the role of qualitative characteristics of parent speech in coordinating such interactions and scaffolding infant attention. Here, we analysed caregivers' speech to their 18-month-old infants (N = 31) during free play with novel and familiar toys. We investigated whether parent speech content and communicative intent differed when infants or parents initiated an interaction, and whether different speech types affected infant attention differently. Most interactions were initiated by infants’ gaze towards an object followed by parent speech (as opposed to being initiated by parent speech). Parents frequently matched their speech to infants’ focus of attention, and this behaviour extended infants’ attention for an object. On the other hand, parents’ speech was less likely to direct infants’ attention towards objects introduced by parents. Qualitative analyses of parent speech revealed more structured speech for familiar, but more varied speech and questions for novel objects. However, no speech types were found to be particularly effective at guiding infants’ attention. These findings illustrate infants’ autonomy in creating and shaping their own learning opportunities, with caregiver input supporting rather than directing exploration. They emphasize infants’ active role – even at a young age – in their own developmental trajectory, and the importance of caregivers’ sensitivity and responsiveness to infants’ displays of curiosity.

Speaker: Anne-Kathrin Mahlke (UXGN)

GöCoFo_2025_Mahlke.pptx

62 Once Upon a Time: A Storytelling Language Model

Children acquire language not just by listening, but through interacting with others in their social context. Inspired by this active learning, we ask: can language models become better storytellers if they learn not only from next-word prediction, but also from high-level, cognitively-inspired feedback? We train a student model to generate stories, with a teacher model rating each attempt based on grammar, narrative coherence, and creativity. By varying the proportion of self-supervised text versus teacher feedback in training, we assess the impact of this social interactive learning on formal and functional language competence. We thus aim to connect principles of human language acquisition with computational modeling.

Speaker: Jonas Mayer Martins (University of Göttingen (CIDAS))

BACKUP_IF_POWERPOINT_FAILS_BLM2025.pdf

BLM2025.pptx

11:20 Coffee break

From Decision-Making to Interaction

Convener: Vanessa Mitschke

63 The co-evolution of cooperation and competition within groups

Among the major transitions in the evolution of biological complexity is the clustering of independent individuals in groups, colonies and societies. Clustering allows for individuals to cooperate – paying costs to benefit others’ fitness – and to compete – spending ‘…energies on injuring others, and on protecting against being injured’. Somewhat puzzling is that throughout nature, cooperating and competing can co-occur, with individuals paying costs to both increase and reduce another’s fitness. Here we examine this interrelation of cooperation and competition, alongside its prevalence and possible co-evolution. With evolutionary game theory and agent-based simulations, we show that strategies combining cooperation and competition become prevalent and evolutionary stable when the efficiency of cooperation exceeds the cost of competing for both unstructured populations and for structured populations with varying levels of inter-community interactions. Furthermore, as interactions within communities become comparatively productive, individual fitness benefits from heretofore unidentified strategies that combine parochial cooperation (cooperate within but not between groups) and neighbour nastiness (compete within but not between groups). Our results integrate prevailing theory and observation on cooperation with models of animal contests and competition, resonate with recent empirical observations, and suggest that individual fitness in group-forming species in the ultimate depends on evolved capacity to flexibly decide whether, when, and with whom to cooperate and compete.

Speaker: Carsten De Dreu (University of Groningen)

DeDreu Gottingen 2025.pptx

64 The evolution of between-sex bonds in primates

Bonds, good and differentiated relationships, among group members have fitness benefits, also bonds among non-kin males and females. Here we explore from a deductive framework in what circumstances Between Sex Bonds (BSB) can be expected in multi-male multi-female primate group. BSB are considered a way to access sources of power that are subject to leverage provided by the other sex. This differs from, yet complements, power obtained through force. We predict that leverage will be higher, 1) when the receiver benefits on average more than the provider, 2) receivers cannot share the resource, and/or 3) the resource is rare and valuable. We expect BSB to be found, 4) when long-term targeting of the same partner yields benefits. We argue that females’ main source of leverage is fertilizable eggs, whereas males mainly have leverage over protection of females and offspring. Systematic testing of these proposals is not yet possible due to a drawer effect, yet found patterns conform to our predictions. The investment in shared offspring may result in interdependency between male and female strategies, but the different services provided by females and males indicate that affiliative exchanges associated with bonds between the sexes will be typically asymmetric and variable over time. Thus, bonds between the sexes are expected in a limited number of circumstances that provide both females and males leverage over sex-specific resources.

Speaker: Liesbeth Sterck (Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands)

65 Vocal accommodation in the syntactic structure of marmoset phee sequences

Vocal accommodation, the process by which individuals make their vocalizations more similar to those of social partners, facilitates communication and interactions between individuals. This convergence can occur at multiple levels, however, most studies have focused on within-call structural changes and whether mammals also converge in call sequence structure remains largely unknown. We tested for both structural and syntactic convergence in the call sequences of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) during pair formation. Six adult individuals were recorded before pairing and again four months after random assignment into three breeding pairs. For each session, we extracted phee sequences and classified each call as produced to a partner or to a non-partner. Acoustic similarity between partners was quantified using three approaches: traditional spectral parameters, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, and dynamic time warping alignment costs. Syntactic similarity was assessed with four independent measures capturing transition probabilities, bigram frequencies, repeat-length distributions, and local alignment scores. After four months together, pairs showed clear syntactic convergence: distances in sequence structure decreased in non-partner repertoire (LMM, p<0.001). In contrast, spectral distances did not decline, suggesting that marmosets modulate sequence organization more readily than call structure. This study provides the first evidence of syntactic vocal convergence in a primate, revealing that social bonds can shape not only the acoustic form of calls but also their arrangement, highlighting an under-recognized dimension of mammalian vocal flexibility.

Speaker: Dr Kaja Wierucka (DPZ)

Wierucka_curiosity and interaction.pptx

66 Automated detection of social interactions in free-ranging redfronted lemurs using deep learning

Computer vision provides powerful tools for studying primate behavior in videos recorded in the wild by enabling automatic tracking of individuals and detection of their behaviors. While much of the existing work has focused on identifying individual actions, relatively little attention has been given to detecting social interactions among nonhuman primates.

In this talk, we present a deep learning-based approach for detecting interactions in naturalistic settings, using field experiments with redfronted lemurs as a case study. We show how individuals can be tracked and identified using a bounding box-based model, and how our custom video annotation interface facilitates efficient labeling of actions and interactions. Using the annotated data, we train computer vision models designed to detect social interactions, including gaze target detection models and dynamic scene graphs.

Together, this pipeline outlines a path for automatically detecting social interactions of nonhuman primates in natural environments, with potential applicability across species and research contexts.

Speaker: Richard Vogg (Institute for Computer Science, University of Göttingen)

CognitionForumOct2025.pptx

13:10 Lunch break

Plenaries

Convener: Igor Kagan (DPZ)

67 Cooperative strategies in marmoset dyads and their neural mechanisms

Cooperation in primate species relies on advanced social cognition, but the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting cooperative behaviors remain unclear. To investigate this, we examined freely moving marmoset dyads in a cooperative lever-pulling task. Marmosets successfully coordinated their actions, relying on social vision rather than environmental cues. Causal dependencies between social gaze and pull actions revealed both gaze-dependent and gaze-independent strategies. Cooperation depended on social relationships, including dominance, kinship, and sex. Remarkably, marmosets adapted their strategies based on partner identity, indicating rapid social learning and memory. Building on decision neuroscience frameworks, we hypothesized that social gaze functions as a mechanism for accumulating social evidence prior to cooperative actions, supported by the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). Using a wireless neural recording system in a naturalistic setting, we found enhanced social gaze before successful pull actions. Single-neuron analyses revealed that dmPFC firing rate slopes were modulated by gaze accumulation—shallower slopes occurred with more gaze accumulation, mirroring ramping patterns observed in decision-making studies. At the population level, dmPFC principal component trajectories were longer when more gaze accumulation was required, especially during mutual cooperation. These findings show that the dmPFC encodes accumulated social evidence through both neural and population dynamics, supporting a distributed mechanism for naturalistic social decision-making. Taken together, they provide new insights into the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying cooperative interactions and underscore the importance of social gaze in coordinating real-world cooperation.

Speaker: Steve Chang (Yale University)

From Decision-Making to Interaction

Convener: Irene Lacal (DPZ)

68 Neural correlates of dynamic social coordination in macaque premotor cortex

Social interactions often unfold in real time with direct face-to-face visibility. Yet, the behavioural and neuronal mechanisms of dynamic strategic interactions remain not well understood. Here, we studied macaque monkeys in a dyadic Bach-or-Stravinsky (BoS) economic decision game, which incentivizes coordination but entails an inherent conflict about which of two options to coordinate on. Macaques made reach decisions before, simultaneously with, or after a predictable or unpredictable human confederate partner, a conspecific, or alone but with similar action timing. Under naturalistic conditions of mutual action visibility, macaques learned to monitor partner’s actions, either following an observed choice or anticipating predictable choices.

Most premotor cortex neurons were spatially selective in solo and dyadic contexts, but a subset of neurons encoded self-action only in the dyadic context, and action sequence primarily influenced activity in the presence of a partner. When monkeys acted first, population-level decoding reflected the predictable partner’s upcoming choice even before the partner’s action, with decoding accuracy further enhanced after the action. Coordination success could only be decoded after the second action (monkey's or partner's) became evident. This decoding was strongest for unpredictable and weakest for reward-irrelevant partners, indicating modulation by relevance. During passive observation – where monkeys received reward based on the partner’s choice but did not act – the representation of the partner’s spatial choice was weak, while the representation of expected value became stronger. These results show how premotor cortex emphasizes relevant task dimensions, integrating others’ actions with one’s own goals and choices during dynamic strategic coordination.

Speaker: Dr Sebastian Moeller (DPZ)

69 Moving in and out of synch – effects of physiological synchronization on cooperation success in human dyads

Cooperation success has long been hypothesized to be causally linked with psychophysiological synchronization. For example, shared synchronous musical experiences elicit synchrony in heartbeats and influences participants’ performance in a cooperation task later. What remains unclear is how psychological synchronization emerges and the exact triggers that help or hinder synchronization. In this study we examine the effect of physiological synchronization between human dyads on cooperation success in two different tasks, a cooperative motor coordination task and communication task with two distinct roles. We tested 52 dyads (16 and 36 same-sex stranger and familiar dyads, respectively) while measuring their heartrate and skin conductance during task performance. We assessed intrapersonal features such as empathy and within-dyad relationships with questionnaires and coded behaviors such as vocalizations, nodding and body movements during tasks. Physiological synchronization during tasks was calculated using Windowed-Cross-Correlation, that allowed us assign leaders and followers of the synchronization. We find that physiological synchronization above chance levels only occurs in the motor-coordination task. Cooperation success in neither task was influenced by physiological synchronization but rather by features of the dyad itself, specifically dyads with high friendship scores outperforming strangers. Furthermore, dyads more similar in their empathy scores outperformed others. Moreover, if the individual leading the synchronization exhibited higher empathy scores, dyads’ success in the motor coordination task increased. Our results suggest that task modality and differences in roles during cooperation matter for the emergence of synchronization and that physiological synchronization might be a byproduct of interactions rather than a cause for cooperation success.

Speaker: Rahel Katharina Brügger (Universität Zürich)

göttingen2025_rkb.pptx

70 Consolation or consternation? Whether pigs react prosocially to a partner in need relates to their extent of emotional arousal

Previous research shows that pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) are sensitive to each other’s emotional states and provide targeted aid, including helping and consolation. However prosocial behavior in pigs varies greatly across individuals and experiments. We present data from two studies indicating an important role of emotional arousal in mediating prosocial behavior. In the first study, n = 74 adolescent pigs were tested in two separation-reunion contexts. In the helping context, pen-mates could first observe and then help a trapped pig to return to the group, while in the direct-reunion, pen-mates did not receive cues from the separated pig until the reunion. In the helping context, responses satisfied criteria for consolation, while direct-reunions elicited increases in bi-directional affiliative and non-affiliative interactions with reunited pigs (GLMM, p < 0.001), who showed more anxiety behavior (GLMM, p = 0.03). In a second study, we measured helping responses to n = 219 trapped pigs, representing different breeds tested at different institutes, who first received either a high-stress or a low-stress intervention. We found site-specific differences in helping (GLMM, p = 0.04), due to differences in propensities to help pigs who had received the high-stress intervention (post-hoc Tukey, p = 0.02). The combined results suggest that emotional contagion of cues from mildly-distressed partners promotes prosocial behavior, while emotional contagion of cues from highly-distressed partners promotes prosocial reactions in some individuals while inhibiting them in others. Future work will address causes of this variation, including potential variation in capacities for emotional regulation in pigs.

Speaker: Liza Rose Moscovice (GNOI)

Moscovice_pptx_Goettingen_14.10.25.pptx

71 Stable clique membership in mouse societies requires oxytocin-enabled social sensory states

The ability to form stable de novo relationships in complex environments is essential for social functioning and is impaired in severe psychiatric disorders including autism. Yet, the neurobiological basis and cognitive processes enabling the formation of stable bonds in larger groups remain poorly understood, thereby limiting our ability to develop effective therapies. Here, we establish a semi-naturalistic model of clique formation in mouse societies, where individuals are tracked longitudinally from massive video data. Small, stable rich-clubs develop within these mouse social networks. Consistent with human rich-clubs, these cohesive cliques tend to have high social rank and exert influence on non-members. Interestingly, neither prior rich-club-membership in a different group nor kinship facilitate entry into rich-clubs. Mimicking sparse population genetics, we probed the open question whether a subtle neuro-cognitive phenotype, namely impaired induction of social sensory processing states by cortical oxytocin signaling, impair higher-order social bonding in these complex social environments. Despite preserved social motivation, mice with alterations in this oxytocin subsystem fail to join rich clubs. They approached group members less consistently, and connections from others towards them fluctuated more as well. This reciprocal disorganization highlights how interactional dynamics within social networks can amplify individual-level deficits, consistent with models of emergent properties of social behavior. These findings underscore the role of oxytocin in tuning sensory systems into a social processing state, with profound implications for an individual's ability to establish stable relationships in complex social networks.

Speaker: Corentin Nelias (Dept. of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Mainz, Johannes-Gutenberg University, Untere Zahlbacher Strasse 8, 55131 Mainz, Germany)

Corentin_Nelias_göttingen_cognition_forum.pdf

Corentin_Nelias_göttingen_cognition_forum.pptx

16:30 Break

72 The evolving landscapes of Computational Neurosciences on the Göttingen Campus and the next 20 years of BCCN

Speaker: Fred Wolf (Göttingen Campus Insitute for Dynamics of Biological Networks)

Plenaries

Convener: Fred Wolf (CIDBN, MPI-DS, Institute for Dynamics of Complex Systems, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience,)

73 Neural codes for natural behaviors in bats

We study the neural basis of natural behaviors, in particular navigation and social behaviors – taking a “Natural Neuroscience” approach. In my talk I will discuss three recent studies: (1) Our recent discovery that in social groups, hippocampal neurons encode rich social signals – including the identities, sex, hierarchy, and affiliation of other individuals. (2) A coding-transformation that we discovered in the hippocampus of bats flying in a very long 200-meter tunnel – from sparse coding in hippocampal area CA3 to dense coding in area CA1. (3) Neuroscience in the wild: recordings of place cells and head-direction cells in bats navigating outdoors on a remote oceanic island near Zanzibar. These three studies demonstrate different levels of experimental control vs. ecological validity in our efforts to understand the neural basis of behavior and cognition.

Speaker: Nachum Ulanovsky (Weizmann Institute of Science)

Conference Dinner

Wednesday 15 October

Neural Interfaces

74 Object vision in mice

Speaker: Emilie Macé (University Medical Center Göttingen)

75 Optogenetic Generation of In-Vivo-Like Conductance Fluctuations

Most studies of neural encoding still rely on patch-clamp noise injection, an invasive method that poorly replicates the conductance-based, dendritic inputs neurons receive in vivo. Optogenetics offers a non-invasive alternative, but turning noisy light into realistic synaptic conductances requires new strategies.

We present a framework that uses Gaussian-noise illumination of channelrhodopsins to generate Ornstein–Uhlenbeck conductances — the standard model of in-vivo input. By characterizing the opsins’ light-to-conductance transfer functions and designing inverse filters, we produced conductance fluctuations that closely match desired statistics across a wide range of timescales. In cortical neuron models, these inputs drove naturalistic, fluctuation-driven spiking under both somatic and dendritic expression.

This approach enables flexible, non-invasive reproduction of realistic input statistics, opening the door to optogenetic studies of neuronal dynamics with true in-vivo fidelity.

Speaker: Neil Lewis Wesch (Göttingen University, CIDBN)

76 Screening of adeno-associated virus serotypes to transduce gastric smooth muscle cells for optogenetic stimulation

Gastroparesis is characterized by severely delayed gastric emptying without physical obstruction, causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and epigastric pain. Currently, no treatment reliably restores gastric emptying. Optogenetics involves genetically introducing light-sensitive proteins into target cells, enabling precise stimulation with high spatial and temporal resolution. We previously demonstrated that direct optogenetic stimulation of murine gastric smooth muscle cells (SMCs) with UV or blue light induces contractions and increases intragastric pressure in transgenic mice expressing Neuropsin (hOPN5) or Channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2).

For clinical translation, an efficient gene delivery vector is needed to express optogenetic proteins in gastric SMCs in vivo. Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are widely used in gene therapy and have entered clinical use. We compared the transduction efficiency of various known AAV serotypes (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, eB, PHP) and the novel AAV2.5 in isolated murine gastric SMCs.

SMCs were isolated from CD-1 wild-type mice and incubated with increasing doses of each AAV. After six days, transduction efficiency was analyzed via fluorescence microscopy. Capsid variants AAV2.5, AAV2, AAV1, and AAV6 achieved expression rates above 40%. Notably, AAV2.5 showed more than a tenfold higher efficiency compared to others (log10(EC50): AAV2.5: 6.89 ± 0.12 vs. AAV2: 8.08 ± 0.08).

We identified AAV2.5 as a potent vector for gene transfer into gastric SMCs. The next steps include testing in human gastric SMCs and in vivo studies in mice.

Speaker: Johannes Riebeling (University Medical Center Göttingen)

Cognition Forum 2025_JR_final.pptx

77 A versatile interface for in-vitro neuronal networks provides patterned stimulation 24/7

Adaptive mechanisms are essential for maintaining a balanced operating regime of neuronal networks. Disturbances in these mechanisms—for example, mutations in ion channels, synaptic receptors, or scaffold proteins—can lead to epilepsy, neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative disorders. Recent advances in single-cell transcriptomics, together with patient-derived organoid technology, provide unprecedented insights into the molecular basis of such pathologies. However, linking molecular changes to functional defects at the cell and network levels remains a formidable challenge.

Functional characterization of neuronal networks requires not only spatially and temporally resolved readouts, but also spatially and temporally controlled stimulation over long timescales. To address this, we combine incubator-compatible platforms for extracellular electrophysiology with optical stimulation of light-sensitized neurons.
Our microprocessor-controlled “light-disco” stimulators can operate continuously for months, providing patterned stimulation. This low-budget, scalable solution enables us to record from hundreds of cells for days while controlling spatiotemporal input with millisecond precision.

We combine our experimental setup with an integrated data management and analysis infrastructure that automates handling of large-scale recordings. From these data, we can extract neuronal receptive fields, infer functional connectivity and characterize the dynamic structure of population activity under stimulation.

Together, this flexible framework provides a powerful approach to study how adaptive mechanisms shape the dynamics of living neural networks across biologically relevant timescales.

Speaker: Cyprian Adler (Göttingen University, CIDBN)

Plenaries

78 Theory of responses to holographic optogenetics in recurrent circuits

The cerebral cortex exhibits strong recurrent connectivity governed by complex wiring rules. Recent advances allow probing this circuitry through optogenetic perturbations of single or few neurons, yet a general theory linking these responses to underlying connectivity is lacking. Here, we develop an exactly solvable framework to predict responses to perturbations in networks with multiple cell types and space- and feature-dependent connectivity. Analysis of these equations reveals simple rules that govern perturbation response patterns. Comparison with experimental data imposes new constraints on the connectivity parameters and enables predictions of the responses of unmeasured cell types and novel experimental conditions.

Speaker: Agostina Palmigiano (University College London)

11:30 Coffee break

Cognition, Circuits and Cells

79 Lateral hypothalamic orexin/hypocretin circuits affect vision on multiple scales in mice.

Lateral hypothalamic orexin/hypocretin (OH) circuits are required for stable consciousness and loss of OH signals cause narcolepsy in humans, dogs and mice. While it was previously shown that OH predominantly activates deep cortical layers responsible for cortical brain state dynamics, here we show that orexin knockout (KO) causes a striking 50% reduction in the amplitude of fast glutamatergic AMPA-receptor responses in layer 4 to 2/3 circuits of mouse primary visual cortex (V1), suggesting impaired synaptic plasticity. Indeed, orexin KO mice show impaired ocular dominance plasticity (ODP), an established in vivo model of experience-dependent visual plasticity, apparent in both juvenile(P28-35) and adult (>P110) mice. While intranasal application of orexin-A has previously alleviated age-related cognitive decline, we only observed a subtle enhancement of ODP in adult WT and KO-mice after intranasal orexin-A application.

On a behavioural/perceptual level, orexin KO mice were worse in orientation discrimination, needing a larger angle difference to discriminate square wave patterns, suggesting that processing of visual signals might also be affected. We therefore tested whether orexin KO would affect V1 novelty signals using an oddball paradigm and recorded visually evoked potentials (VEP) in anaesthetized mice: in V1 of orexin KO mice, typical VEP peaks were delayed compared to WT-controls. Similarly, differential context dependent activation of V1 by novel versus adapted stimuli was delayed in orexin KO mice.

Together our data show that OH circuits affect vision on multiple levels, including local circuit transmission, visual processing, plasticity and perception.

Speaker: Cornelia Schöne (UBZU)

202510155_Göttingen Cognition Forum_Subcortical control of visual processing and plasticity.pptx

80 Dendritic predictive learning enhances the detection of salient stimuli for adaptive behavior

A central function of cognition is to detect relevant sensory signals to adapt behavior.
To this end, a specialized neural system in insects learns associations between relevant sensory inputs and beneficial changes in behavior, the mushroom body (MB). However, whereas the prevalent idea is that learning in the MB mainly occurs during the presence of explicit reinforcement, such as sucrose rewards or painful experiences, we here summarize recent experimental evidence that underscores the role of previous sensory experiences in shaping learning and adaptive behavior.
Specifically, we highlight that plasticity in the MB calyx, a large expansion layer that forms sensory representations, drives a rapid and lasting depression of sensory responses to repeated, predictable sensory stimuli. In contrast, first evidence suggests that it potentiates sensory responses to novel, unpredicted stimuli. We show that these plasticity mechanisms can be explained with the theory of dendritic predictive learning, where plastic inhibitory feedback suppresses predicted inputs, and modulates excitatory plasticity to exclusively enhance synaptic weights to unpredicted inputs. Moreover, we show that this plasticity is in line with observations in the cerebellum granule layer, where an expansion layer with a strikingly similar interneuron circuit and dendro-synaptic organization transforms inputs to drive adaptive behavior and motor learning.
Functionally, dendritic predictive learning enhances adaptive behavioral responses to salient and novel stimuli, and facilitates the detection of relevant inputs in the presence of distracting background stimuli. Thus, these results highlight a general plasticity mechanism that supports a simple form of curiosity in insects and beyond.

Speaker: Lucas Rudelt (MPI for Dynamics and Self-Organization)

Dendritic predictive learning enhances detection of salient stimuli.pptx

81 Sensory neural codes in the human temporal cortex flexibly adjust representational geometry to meet multiple task demands

Humans excel at rapidly learning and flexibly performing multiple tasks. This cognitive flexibility is thought to be the hallmark of human intelligence. Flexible learning requires retaining and utilizing previously learnt information while remaining sensitive to changes in the environment as well as rapid mental adjustments across different tasks. An open question remains how the brain balances utilizing learnt information while flexibly performing multiple tasks on the same set of perceptual features. We asked 1) whether this requires neural codes that are specialized for individual tasks or multipurpose codes that can exhibit context-dependent flexibility, and 2) if multi-purpose codes are utilized, where these flexible codes exist in the human brain – i.e., in the fronto-parietal network or already in sensory cortices. To this end, we conducted intracranial electrophysiological recordings from a wide range of brain areas in human epilepsy patients while they learn and perform three different tasks in a context-dependent manner, i.e., individuate, categorize and form abstract concepts over similar visual stimuli. By assessing representational geometries, we find that multi-purpose neural codes exist already in the temporal cortex where representational spaces are flexibly adjusted to perform the different tasks. Therefore, our results provide evidence against the traditional outlook that sensory neural codes in the temporal lobe simply represent the external world in a stable manner. Instead, we find that neural representations in the temporal cortex are multi-purpose, exhibit context-dependent flexibility based on task demand and can already be used to learn and perform multiple tasks.

Speaker: Tarana Nigam (Cognitive Neurobiology, Research Center “One Health” Ruhr, University Alliance Ruhr, Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, GermanyNeural Circuits and Cognition Group, European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen - A Joint Initiative of the University Medical Center Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany ; Perception and Plasticity Group, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Göttingen, Germany)

82 Heterogeneity and response sharpening in balanced ring models

Ring models are widely used in neuroscience to study fundamental mechanisms such as response sharpening and working memory. Ring networks composed of spiking neurons in the balanced state can reliably reproduce the irregular activity observed in vivo and exhibit phenomena like response sharpening through local inhibition and feature tuning emerging in random networks. In principle, balanced ring networks can be analyzed using powerful mean-field theory that captures even heterogeneous response profiles, but this approach has so far been applied only to binary networks and remains technically demanding.
Here, we present a class of analytically tractable spiking balanced ring models that allow for a rigorous dissection of response tuning mechanisms. We analyze networks with both cosine- and von Mises–shaped connectivity and input. In the von Mises case, the mean population activity profile is derived analytically as an infinite series of Bessel functions. This profile directly follows from the balance condition and is shown to be independent of the single-neuron model and intrinsic heterogeneity.
In contrast, for the cosine-tuned network—a limiting case of von Mises tuning—the balance equation alone is insufficient. Instead, the population profile depends on a set of self-consistency equations for the moments of the firing rate distribution, which we derive in closed form. We provide accurate approximate solutions and show how they determine the full distribution of heterogeneous tuning curves across the network. Our results strongly suggest that the population response profile is universal with respect to many biophysical parameters and specific neuron model properties.

Speaker: Mohammadreza Soltanipour (Göttingen University, CIDBN)

13:15 lunch break

Cognition, Circuits and Cells

83 Synaptic and neuronal heterogeneities to improve computation and artificial intelligence

Heterogeneity is an inherent feature of biological systems that is often treated as a source of noise or disregarded in analyses of network function. In a series of computational studies, we systematically examine task-independent, intrinsic heterogeneity within neuronal systems and evaluate their role in solving a wide range of tasks with varying levels of complexity. Our findings demonstrate that biologically consistent variability in synaptic and neuronal properties substantially enhances the performance and robustness of both rate- and spike-based networks, as well as conventional machine learning architectures. Moreover, by implementing our spike-based networks on cutting-edge neuromorphic hardware platforms and quantifying their energy consumption, we provide evidence that heterogeneity could be a fundamental principle for the design of next generation energy-efficient computing hardware. Taken together, these results illustrate the potential of insights from cellular neuroscience to deepen our understanding of network function and inform the development of novel design principles for advancing artificial intelligence and its hardware.

Speaker: Christian Tetzlaff

Neural Circuit Evolution

84 Evolution of action potential firing precision and axon initial segment scaffolds

“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” Theodosius Dobzhansky
My talk will shine this light onto some specializations in neurons and neuronal networks. The starting point is the distributed nature of information transfer and encoding. In a mammal’s brain, a given input is relayed to hundreds or thousands of neurons, which then collectively transmit it further up the chain. A fundamental requirement in this population encoding is for the individual neuron’s response to occur precisely timed. Precise to the millisecond in a mouse cortex, reportedly even more precise in a human. Using mutations in mice, our earlier work demonstrated that this timing precision relies on scaffold proteins (AnkG, betaIV-spectrin) anchoring NaV and KV channels to the axon initial segment. Interestingly, these anchoring sequences appeared at the branching off of vertebrates and jawed fish, respectively. We now present preliminary data from extant species representing this transition: the lancelet and the lamprey, indicating that indeed spike timing precision improved in parallel with the encephalization burst and the appearance of jaws.
So is this precision further increased in primates? We report data from different mammalian species, including four primate species, that support a different view. Overall, the precision is comparable across species; however, different cell types within the same species exhibit very different response properties. The diversity appears to be larger in marmoset and humans as compared to mice, however that might be partially explained by selection criteria. We currently compile more data on early chordates and primates.

Speaker: Andreas Neef (Göttingen University, CIDBN)

85 Information and the Evolution of Species-Specific Signals and Preferences

Sexual signals play a crucial role in driving speciation and evolution. A key function of these signals is to communicate species identity. Signaling species identity creates reproductive barriers by enabling recognition of conspecific mates and discrimination against incompatible heterospecifics. The signals and signal preferences can evolve rapidly in speciation events, yet research has largely focused on the signal and not the associated preference. However, the content in the signal only sets an upper bound for information transmission in a communication system, whereas signal preferences reveal which information is actually used in evolution.
Here, we examine the calling songs of crickets, a species-specific signal with structure on multiple timescales, and their preferences across a group of 15 to 40 species. We find that the calling songs of 40 species carry sufficient information for species discrimination. Signal preferences enable conspecific recognition and heterospecific discrimination but exploit only a small fraction of the information from the song. These results suggest that these signals could support additional species, but that females only use information sufficient for species discrimination. The preferences may have evolved to balance information usage for heterospecific discrimination and robustness for conspecific recognition. Overall, by examining the coevolution of the sender and the receiver in a species-specific signal, our results reveal the processes and limitations of signal evolution.

Speaker: Daesung Cho (ENI Göttingen)

2025_cogforum.pptx

86 A synthetic biology model of the early visual pathway to study the emergence of orientation selectivity

A fundamental property of neurons in the primary visual cortex is their preference for orientation of edges that is invariant under contrast changes.
We designed a synthetic hybrid neural circuit to study the emergence of orientation selectivity under different thalamo-cortical connection schemes. To this end, a computational model of the retino-thalamic pathway was combined with an in-vitro model of cortical input layer 4. The latter was either a primary culture of cortical neurons or an acute brain slice of primary visual cortex. The two stages were interfaced optogenetically by expression of channelrhodopsin in the neurons of the in-vitro circuit and holographic stimulation. Neural activity was then monitored electrophysiologically with multielectrode arrays.
We then implemented a classical feed-forward connectome and found that neurons reliably reproduced the orientation selectivity defined by the input as long as cortical hypercolumns were large enough. Strength of selectivity did not increase further beyond the typical hypercolumn size observed across different species.
When the thalamocortical input was retinotopic but unselective for orientation, we measured orientation selective responses in the cortical activity that we reasoned had to be generated intrinsically by the target network. We tested the effect of different contrast levels on this tuning and found that the orientation selectivity can change for individual neurons but is stable on the population level.
In summary, we showed that contrast-invariant orientation preference can emerge from unspecific thalamic input in a simplified cortex model.

Speaker: Julian Vogel (Göttingen University, CIDBN)

Cognition_forum2025.pptx

87 Marking homologous genetic neural lineages reveals developmental differences in brains of flies and beetles with likely relevance to circuitry and behavior

Evolutionary adaptations of brain structure and function are essential for animal survival and emerge during development. Some known divergences seen in brain development are likely relevant for brain function. For instance, adult neurogenesis in mushroom bodies is found in beetles but not in flies and might modify learning behavior. Further, beetle larvae have a partial central complex (CX) while fly larvae lack a visible CX. However, the cellular and genetic mechanisms controlling diversification remain enigmatic.
To study brain diversification both, between life stages and between taxa, we used homology-directed genome editing to transgenically mark homologous cell groups throughout development. Specifically, we marked all cells expressing the transcription factor retinal homeobox (rx) in the fly Drosophila melanogaster and the beetle Tribolium castaneum. These genetic neural lineages are precise tools to mark and compare the development of homologous neural cells from the embryo to the adult.
So far, we found several differences between fly and beetle: Nine type II neuroblasts are present in beetle embryos (compared to eight found in flies and grasshoppers), which show an increased division activity. This correlates with the earlier emergence of a central complex in beetle larvae. In the adult brain, we found a cell cluster in flies, which seems to be absent in beetles. Finally, a change of rx expression in the mushroom bodies likely correlates with differences in adult neurogenesis between fly and beetle.
We will follow up these differences to reveal the underlying genetic and cellular mechanisms.

Speaker: Gregor Bucher (University of Göttingen)

88 From ciliary beating to muscular locomotion: Developmental origins of nervous systems in the annelid Platynereis dumerilii

Marine invertebrate larvae with pelago-benthic life cycles employ distinct locomotory strategies: swimming larvae move by ciliary beating during the pelagic phase, while benthic adults use muscles for crawling. Despite the fundamental importance of this lifestyle and behavioural change, the developmental and evolutionary relationships between the underlying nervous systems remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the developmental trajectories of ciliomotor and neuromuscular neurons using the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, a model organism featuring a biphasic life cycle and invariant development. We combine zygote microinjection of neuronal (GCaMP6s) and nuclear (H2A-mCherry) fluorescent markers with long-term live imaging on a custom-built light-sheet fluorescence microscope ("Flamingo") to capture neuronal development at high temporal resolution. Through semi-automated cell tracking, we reconstruct the complete developmental lineages of neurons associated with each locomotory mode. Here, we present preliminary findings from this ongoing study. Our analysis addresses two key questions: (1) Do ciliomotor and neuromuscular neurons arise from the same or distinct cell lineage? (2) Do these neurons follow conserved or divergent molecular differentiation programs? By integrating these lineage data with existing transcriptomic and connectomic datasets, we plan to map relationships between gene expression patterns, neuron identity, and circuit assembly onto the lineages. This work will provide new insights into the mechanisms driving neuronal differentiation during the pelagic-to-benthic transition and contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary origins of metazoan nervous systems.

Speaker: Mette Handberg-Thorsager (Göttingen University)

89 Closing Remarks

Speaker: Fred Wolf (CIDBN, MPI-DS, Institute for Dynamics of Complex Systems, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience,)