Project description DEENESFRITPL Exploring brain evolution for processing social stimuli Human and non-human primates greatly depend on members of their own species to survive. Therefore, they spend a lot of time watching how these members behave in order to prepare adaptive social responses. The EU-funded RELEVANCE project intends to gain insight into how the brain evolved special structures to process highly relevant social stimuli. It also aims to show how social vision sustains adaptive behaviour. To achieve this, it will explore the visual processing of bodies and interactions mechanistically and computationally, and demonstrate how this processing sustains higher abilities such as understanding intention, action and emotion. The project will shed new light on social communication deficits in neuropsychiatry and propose novel hypotheses about their genetic basis. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Social species, and specifically human and nonhuman primates, rely heavily on conspecifics for survival. Considerable time is spent watching each other’s behavior because this is often the most relevant source of information for preparing adaptive social responses. The project RELEVANCE aims to understand how the brain evolved special structures to process highly relevant social stimuli like bodies and to reveal how social vision sustains adaptive behaviour.This requires a novel way of thinking about biological information processing, currently among the brains’ most distinctive and least understood characteristic that accounts for the biggest difference between brains and computers.The project will develop a mechanistic and computational understanding of the visual processing of bodies and interactions and show how this processing sustains higher abilities such as understanding intention, action and emotion. Relevance will accomplish this by integrating advanced methods from multiple disciplines: psychophysics and high-field functional imaging in combination with virtual reality and neural stimulation in humans; electrophysiology with optogenetics and laminar recordings in monkeys. Crosstalk betweenhuman and monkey methods will establish homologies between the species, revealing cornerstones of the theory. In a radical departure from current practice, we will develop novel deep neural network models that unify the data. These models will not only capture detailed mechanisms of neural processing of complex social stimuli and its dynamics, but also reproduce the modulation of brain activity during active behavior.RELEVANCE will reveal novel ways of understanding and diagnosing social communication deficits in neuropsychiatry, and suggest novel hypotheses about their genetic basis. It will motivate novel principles and architectures for processing of socially relevant information in computer and robotic systems. Fields of science social sciencespsychologycognitive psychologymental processesnatural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiologycognitive neurosciencenatural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware applicationsvirtual realitynatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputational intelligence Keywords Social vision body representation high level vision neural modeling Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2019-SyG - ERC Synergy Grant Call for proposal ERC-2019-SyG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SyG - Synergy grant Coordinator KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN Net EU contribution € 2 806 896,00 Address Oude markt 13 3000 Leuven Belgium See on map Region Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 Beneficiaries (3) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN Belgium Net EU contribution € 2 806 896,00 Address Oude markt 13 3000 Leuven See on map Region Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT Netherlands Net EU contribution € 2 777 250,00 Address Minderbroedersberg 4 6200 MD Maastricht See on map Region Zuid-Nederland Limburg (NL) Zuid-Limburg Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 EBERHARD KARLS UNIVERSITAET TUEBINGEN Germany Net EU contribution € 2 724 968,00 Address Geschwister-scholl-platz 72074 Tuebingen See on map Region Baden-Württemberg Tübingen Tübingen, Landkreis Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
