Scientific Overview
The Human team studies ecological cognition and action in freely-moving humans, including adults and young children. Humans offer the unique advantage of verbal report, rich behavioural measures, and — through developmental studies — a window into how naturally evolving action repertoires reshape neural representations over time.
The team investigates two broad classes of ecological tasks:
- Object manipulation: Challenging humans with manipulation tasks requiring long sequences of actions, testing how people discover and exploit affordances in complex environments. Virtual and augmented reality enable the introduction of entirely novel objects with unprecedented affordances, potentially violating the laws of physics.
- Navigation and spatial reasoning: Studying how freely-moving humans navigate and make sequential decisions under uncertainty, complementing the non-human primate team's paradigms and enabling direct cross-species comparisons.
A distinctive focus is the study of young children, whose action repertoire is naturally and rapidly evolving. As children develop new motor skills, the affordances available to them change, providing a natural experiment in how expanding capabilities reshape neural state representations.
Experimental techniques include high-density neural recordings in freely-moving humans, wearable platforms for closed-loop stimulation and recording, EEG, and immersive virtual reality — enabling ecologically valid neuroscience at a scale previously impossible.
Key Questions
- How do humans discover and represent affordances for novel objects, including those that violate familiar physics?
- How do developing action repertoires in young children reshape the neural representations of affordances?
- How do neural state representations in freely-moving humans compare to those in non-human primates performing parallel ecological tasks?
- How does active sampling (eye-movements, reaching) prime sensory systems for incoming information during ecological behaviour?
Team Members
Constantin Rothkopf
Technical University of Darmstadt
Team Leader
Jonathan Kominsky
Central European University
Jean-Paul Noel
University of Minnesota
Nanthia Suthana
Duke University
Daniel Wolpert
Columbia University
Researchers
16
Anna Banki
Postdoc
Central European University
Huzi Cheng
Postdoc
University of Minnesota
Christian Eidahl
Master Student
University of Minnesota
Bettina Maria Fischer
Research Assistant
Central European University
Timothy Ho
Research Assistant
Columbia University
Inga Ibs
Postdoc
TU Darmstadt
Wenxuan Jiang
Postdoc
Duke University
Fabian Kessler
Postdoc
TU Darmstadt
Tina Liu
Research Assistant
University of Minnesota
Lukas Maninger
PhD Student
TU Darmstadt
Niteesh Midlagajni
PhD Student
TU Darmstadt
Anvesh Naik
Postdoc
Columbia University
Uros Topalovic
Postdoc
Duke University
Carlos Vargas
Postdoc
Columbia University
Katharina Wenig
Lab Manager
Central European University
Lukas Wiesner
SURFiN Fellow
Central European University
Related Publications
The Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience: Studying how the brain interacts with the world
Angelaki DE (SCENE principal investigator), Batista A (SCENE principal investigator), Fitzgerald T (SCENE principal investigator), Kominsky JF (SCENE principal investigator), Lengyel M (SCENE principal investigator), Mathis A (SCENE principal investigator), Mathis MW (SCENE principal investigator), Moss CF (SCENE principal investigator), Niell CM (SCENE principal investigator), Noel JP (SCENE principal investigator), Pitkow X (SCENE principal investigator), Rothkopf CA (SCENE principal investigator), Savin C (SCENE principal investigator), Stachenfeld K (SCENE principal investigator), Suthana N (SCENE principal investigator), Tolias A (SCENE principal investigator), Ulanovsky N (SCENE principal investigator), Wolpert DM (SCENE principal investigator), Wong A (SCENE principal investigator), Zimmermann J (SCENE principal investigator)
Neuron, 2026 · DOI · Preprint (PDF)
From peripersonal space to cognitive maps: An evolutionary perspective
Anjum S, Sosa MJ, Serino A, Noel JP (SCENE principal investigator)
Progress in Neurobiology, 2026 · DOI
Curriculum effects in multitask learning through the lens of contextual inference
Shivkumar S, Lengyel M (SCENE principal investigator), Wolpert DM (SCENE principal investigator)
Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2025 · DOI
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