University of Amsterdam ABC Talent Grant

Starting in 2016, I will be working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Psychology Department of the University of Amsterdam because I have been awarded the ABC Talent Grant!

The Brain and Cognition research priority program of the UvA, ABC, provides funding to promote innovative and excellent research in the area of brain and cognitive sciences. The aim is to promote interdisciplinary research and to provide opportunities for collaboration with outstanding researchers.

In this research project, I will work on the theoretical side of cognitive neuroscience, which I think is a prerequisite for future progress in the field. Neuroscientific findings need to be interpreted to inform questions about cognitive functions, and I intend to improve this interpretational step for the field of visual consciousness, which aims to find the ‘neural correlates of consciousness’. However, this effort is seriously impeded by the substantial scientific controversy on theoretical assumptions and methodological approaches.

The project of mapping mind to brain calls for an interdisciplinary collaboration between theoretical and empirical cognitive neuroscientists. Therefore, I will work together with experts in the field of both cognitive neuroscience (dr. Simon van Gaal (UvA) and prof. dr. Anil Seth (University of Sussex, UK) and philosophy of neuroscience and cognition (dr. Julian Kiverstein (UvA) and prof. dr. Marc Slors (Radboud University Nijmegen)).