Behavior and Cognition

How do we make sense of what we see, hear, smell, and touch? How do we decide what we do and how we interact with the world around us? No matter what we do, we are not just passively watching the world. Instead, we continuously strive to understand, and possibly modify our environment. But how do we do that? What is involved in understanding the world and acting purposefully in it?
Looking at small animals with tiny brains like ants or bees, we get the impression that they act effortlessly in the world, foraging for food and returning home safely. In contrast, today's computers and robots with all available sensors and processing power are hardly able to successfully perform simple behaviors such as foraging and homing. The world is too complex and too ambiguous for today's algorithms to get interpreted reliably.
At the Institute of Neuroinformatics we investigate in Behavior and Cognition on various levels, ranging from neuronal circuit models of learning and adaptation over psychophysical experiments for color constancy up to modeling complex behavioral tasks such as exploration and goal-directed navigation. Please select from the projects below to see more details about our research in Behavior and Cognition.