Ernst Pöppel

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich | LMU · Institute of Medical Psychology, Faculty of Medicine; Human Science Center

Patients with lesions in the visual cortex are blind in corresponding regions of the visual field, but they still may process visual information, a phenomenon referred to as residual vision or “blindsight”. Here we report behavioral and fMRI observations with a patient who reports conscious vision across an extended area of blindness for moving, bu...

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long debated about the entailments among “the true, the good, the beautiful” (TGB hereafter). In the current article, we directly probed mainland Chinese subjects’ cognitive entailment among TGB. Using 1–7 (Experiment 1) and 1–6 (Experiment 2) Likert scales, we convergently observed that mainland Chinese s...

Our duration estimation flexibly adapts to the statistical properties of the temporal context. Humans and non-human species exhibit a perceptual bias towards the mean of durations previously observed as well as serial dependence, a perceptual bias towards the duration of recently processed events. Here we asked whether those two phenomena arise fro...

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long debated about the entailments among “the true, the good, the beautiful” (TGB hereafter). In the current article, we directly probed mainland Chinese subjects’ cognitive entailment among TGB. Using 1-7 (Experiment 1) and 1-6 (Experiment 2) Likert scales, we convergently observed that mainland Chinese s...

Our sense of the passage of time flexibly adapts to the statistical properties of the temporal context. Humans and non-human species exhibit a perceptual bias towards the mean of durations previously observed as well as serial dependence, a perceptual bias towards the duration of recently processed events. Here we asked whether those two phenomena...

It is maintained that a classification or taxonomy of functions is required to reflect cognitive functions. On the basis of the epistemological position of a pragmatic monism, it can be stated that cognitive functions are evolutionary products, and furthermore that their availability is dependent on the structural and operational integrity of neura...

This is the claim: Human knowledge expresses itself in three different modes: explicit, implicit, and sensory (e.g., visual) knowledge. The reference to knowledge as explicit knowledge only (as it is usually done) neglects the other modes of knowledge. Instead of using the noun “knowledge,” it is suggested that we use “knowing” as a term to stress...

Temporal perception is crucial to cognitive functions. To better estimate temporal durations, the observers need to construct an internal reference frame based on past experience and apply it to guide future perception. However, how this internal reference frame is constructed remains largely unclear. Here we showed the dynamics of the internal ref...

This article provides a brief critique on a recent study [Tylén, K. et al. (2020): The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117(9), 1578-1584. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1910880117] on whether early human engravings became more aesthetic, more culturally identifiable and more symbolic over time. We argue that s...

Precise timing is essential for many kinds of human behavior. When a fastest response is not required, movements are initiated at the appropriate time requiring an anticipatory temporal component. Temporal mechanisms for movements with such an anticipatory component are not yet sufficiently understood; in particular, it is not known whether on the...

Compared with traditional Western landscape paintings, Chinese traditional landscape paintings usually apply a reversed-geometric perspective and concentrate more on contextual information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we discovered an intracultural bias in the aesthetic appreciation of Western and Eastern traditional landsca...

The ability to perceive changes in motion, such as rapid changes of speed, has important ecological significance. We show that exogenous and endogenous attention have different effects on speed-change perception and operate differently in different regions of the visual field. Using a spatial-cueing paradigm, with either exogenous or endogenous cue...

Percent correct for each subject under deceleration condition in Exp 1. (XLSX)

Percent correct for each subject under acceleration condition in Exp 2. (XLSX)

Thresholds for each subject in Exp 2. (XLSX)

Thresholds for each subject in Exp 1. (XLSX)

Percent correct for each subject under acceleration condition in Exp 1. (XLSX)

Percent correct for each subject under deceleration condition in Exp 2. (XLSX)

Car driving as goal-directed behavior is based on anticipations. In everyday driving, most of the time a car is operated in a rather implicit anticipatory mode with little disparity between an anticipated and actual driving result. A disruption of this driving mode goes along with heightened risk perception and changes in somatic states. In an fMRI...

Research is a very personal matter. On the basis of experiences in different countries with researchers from different cultures over many years, some observations will be described. The conceptual frame of this attempt is to look for anthropological universals and cultural specifics. Much can be learned from spatial representations in the arts. Whe...

Oscillations are important for functional homeostasis. However, the oscillatory processes are sometimes masked by noise. A nonparametric method to extract oscillatory components does not assume stability in period or amplitude, it is resistant to linear components and phase insensitive, and it allows statistical inference.

Previous studies have shown that music is a powerful means to convey affective states, but it remains unclear whether and how social context shape the intensity and quality of emotions perceived in music. Using a within-subject design, we studied this question in two experimental settings, i.e. when subjects were alone versus in company of others w...

The eminent Chinese artist LaoZhu has created a homogeneous set of abstract pictures that are referred to as the “third abstraction.” By definition, these pictures are meant to be representations of the artist's personal involvement and as such to create an internal point of view in the observer on an implicit level of processing. Aiming at investi...

In experimental aesthetics the relationship between the arts and cognitive neuroscience has gained particular interest in recent years. But has cognitive neuroscience indeed something to offer when studying the arts? Here we present a theoretical frame within which the concept of complementarity as a generative or creative principle is proposed; ne...

Western and Chinese artists have different traditions in representing the world in their paintings. While Western artists start since the Renaissance to represent the world with a central perspective and focus on salient objects in a scene, Chinese artists concentrate on context information in their paintings, mainly before the mid-19th century. We...

Differences of reaction times to specific stimulus configurations are used as indicators of cognitive processing stages. In this classical experimental paradigm, continuous temporal processing is implicitly assumed. Multimodal response distributions indicate, however, discrete time sampling, which is often masked by experimental conditions. Differe...

It has been shown recently that a temporal window of approximately 3 s has a modulatory effect on mismatch negativity (MMN). This special temporal window has been interpreted as representing the “subjective present,” and reflecting a temporal segmentation in behavioral and cognitive functions. A more detailed look into the temporal structure of the...

Unlabelled: Single cases may lead to unexpected hypotheses in psychology. We retrospectively analyzed single case studies that suggested organizational principles along the early visual pathway, which have remained unanswered until now. First case: In spite of the inhomogeneity of sensitivity, paradoxically the visual field on the subjective lev...

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a difference event-related potential (ERP) wave reflecting the brain’s automatic reaction to deviant sensory stimuli, and it has been proven to be a useful tool in research on cognitive functions or clinical disorders. In most MMN studies, amplitude, peak latency, or the integral of the responses, in rare cases also the...

Synchronizing neural processes, mental activities and social interactions are considered to be fundamental for the creation of temporal order on the personal and interpersonal level. Several different types of synchronization are distinguished, and for each of them examples are given: Self-organized synchronizations on the neural level giving rise...

Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated an eminent bishop of the Catholic Church in Germany by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural processing while he was responding to short sentences of the Christian Bible, the Islamic Quran, and the Daodejing ascribed to Laoz...

The 3-second-window of “nowness” as indexed by mismatch negativity response under different ISI conditions

It has been proposed that temporal perception is implemented in a "time window" of approximately 3 s which we experience as "present". Using mismatch negativity (MMN), we tested the hypothesis whether a time window of 3 s is selective for pre-attentively detecting the violation of regularity in a stimulus sequence by employing different interstimul...

This study capitalizes on individual episodic memories to investigate the question, how different environments affect us on a neural level. Instead of using predefined environmental stimuli, this study relied on individual representations of beauty and pleasure. Drawing upon episodic memories we conducted two experiments. Healthy subjects imagined...

Contemporary psychiatry is becoming more biologically oriented in the attempt to elicit a biological rationale of mental diseases. Although mental disorders comprise mostly functional abnormalities, there is a substantial overlap between neurology and psychiatry in addressing cognitive disturbances. In schizophrenia, the presence of cognitive impai...

Musical training has been shown to have positive effects on several aspects of speech processing, however, the effects of musical training on the neural processing of speech prosody conveying distinct emotions are yet to be better understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether the neural responses to speech...

Previous research has demonstrated that death reminders influence how we perceive art. In the context of terror management theory, this has been explained by the death-transcending quality of art to convey cultural meaning. In two studies, we examined psychological and neurocognitive responses to naturalistic and surrealistic art when death was pri...

In young healthy participants, the degree of daily rhythmicity largely varies across different neuronal resting-state networks (RSNs), while it is to date unknown whether this temporal pattern of activity is conserved in healthy and pathological aging. Twelve healthy elderly (mean age = 65.1 ± 5.7 years) and 12 patients with amnestic mild cognitive...

What could be a unifying principle for the manifold of temporal experiences: the simultaneity or temporal order of events, the subjective present, the duration of experiences, or the impression of a continuity of time? Furthermore, we time travel to the past visiting in imagination previous experiences in episodic memory, and we also time travel to...

Vocal expression of emotions (EE) in retrieval of events from autobiographical memory was investigated in patients in early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Twenty-one AD patients and 19 controls were interviewed, and EE of the reported memories was rated by 8 independent evaluators. The AD group had lower EE of both recent and remote memory tha...

There appears to be an inconsistency in experimental paradigms used in fMRI research on moral judgments. As stimuli, moral dilemmas or moral statements/ pictures that induce emotional reactions are usually employed; a main difference between these stimuli is the perspective of the participants reflecting first-person (moral dilemmas) or third-perso...

Background: There appears to be an inconsistency in experimental paradigms used in fMRI research on moral judgments. As stimuli, moral dilemmas or moral statements/ pictures that induce emotional reactions are usually employed; a main difference between these stimuli is the perspective of the participants reflecting first-person (moral dilemmas) or...

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the feature of conscious life that scaffolds every act of cognition: subjective time. Our awareness of time and temporal properties is a constant feature of conscious life. Subjective temporality structures and guides every aspect of behavior and cognition, distinguishing memory, perception, and anticipation. This...

In principle, two domains of temporal control in human behavior and cognition can be distinguished, i.e., long-term mechanisms as observed in circadian or circannual rhythms reflecting evolutionary adaptations to geophysical cycles, and self-organized mechanisms as mainly exhibited for short-term intervals in the sub-second to minutes domain. It is...

Human behaviour is characterized both by action and reaction; the action mode can be conceived of as being embedded in anticipatory control, whereas the reactive mode requires the instantaneous processing of stimuli. In the reaction mode, tasks have to be completed (most of the time) as fast as possible; in the action mode, the task is to act “at t...

The influence of pause duration on the reproduction of a 2-sec interval, presented acoustically, was investigated in one S. The duration between the end of the stimulus and the beginning of the reproduction was varied randomly between 0.4 and 50.0 sec. The reproduced interval increased linearly up to a pause duration of approximately 2 sec; longer...

The “microscopic” techniques in biological rhythm research which are used to estimate period, phase, and amplitude of physiological and psychological functions on the basis of sinusoidal approximations are criticized. It is suggested that one confine oneself to hypothesis testing and evaluation of the data with the “naked eye.”

We investigated attentional demands in visual rhythm perception of periodically moving stimuli using a visual search paradigm. A dynamic search display consisted of vertically "bouncing dots" with regular rhythms. The search target was defined by a unique visual rhythm (i.e., a shorter or longer period) among rhythmic distractors with identical per...

Artworks provide sets of sensory stimuli that allow special insights into cognitive processes complementing results obtained with other experimental paradigms. Examples are given from visual art and music using behavioral measures and neuroimaging technology (fMRI). The following topics are addressed: creation and maintenance of personal identity,...

Being reminded of the inherently finite nature of human existence has been demonstrated to elicit strivings for sexual reproduction and the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships. Recently, it has been proposed that the perception of potential mating partners is influenced by mortality salience. Using functional magnetic resonance imag...

The close relationship between temporal perception and speech processing is well established. The present study focused on the specific question whether the speech environment could influence temporal order perception in subjects whose language backgrounds are distinctively different, i.e., Chinese (tonal language) vs. Polish (non-tonal language)....

There is no sense organ specifically dedicated to time perception, as there is for other senses such as hearing and vision. However, this subjective sense of time is fundamental to our conception of reality and it creates the temporal course of events in our lives. Here, we explored neurobiological relations from the clinical perspective, examining...

Inhibition of return (IOR) as an indicator of attentional control is characterized by an eccentricity effect, that is, the more peripheral visual field shows a stronger IOR magnitude relative to the perifoveal visual field. However, it could be argued that this eccentricity effect may not be an attention effect, but due to cortical magnification. T...

The human fear of death is marked by specific psychological reactions that affirm cultural belonging. Terror management theory explains this phenomenon with the symbolic immortality provided by collective meaning in culture. This coping has also been explained with the motive of maintaining a meaningful representation of the world. Here we show tha...

Music communicates and evokes emotions. The number of studies on the neural correlates of emotion and music is increasing but only few have investigated the factors that modulate these neural activations. As previous research has shown that personality traits account for individual variability of neural responses we used functional magnetic resonan...

A control strategy for expert systems is presented which is based on Shafer's Belief theory and the combination rule of Dempster. In contrast to well known strategies it is not sequentially and hypotheses-driven, but parallel and self organizing, determined by the concept of information gain. The information gain, calculated as the maximal differen...

Experimental studies have often reported close associations between rapid auditory processing and language competency. The present study was aimed at improving auditory comprehension in aphasic patients following specific training in the perception of temporal order (TO) of events. We tested 18 aphasic patients showing both comprehension and TO per...

Contemporary psychology and cognitive neuroscience create many opportunities for studying the brain functions, but also generate numerous challenges. To date, scientists face common conceptual problems which are relevant to almost every research study/ case such as: classification of functions, unified methodological approaches, explanation of the...

Recent neuroimaging studies indicate that there may be common ground for aesthetic and moral judgments. However, because previous studies focused on either aesthetic or moral judgments and did not compare the two directly, the issue remains open whether a common ground actually exists. We employed functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to s...

Neurobiological and psychophysical evidence indicates a functional subdivision of the human visual field with a border at approximately 10 to 15 degrees eccentricity. Recent support for this inhomogeneity comes from an attention study on inhibition of return (IOR), which shows a much stronger IOR effect in the periphery relative to the perifoveal v...

Visual art because of its artistic context can be related to the general idea of providing alternative perceptual experiences. However, research examining the neural basis of art beyond the paradigm of beauty has been neglected. This study seeks to determine how the perception of a body in an artwork can be distinguished from the perception of a bo...

Many techniques that compensate for locomotion problems in daily life using externally controlled stimulation have recently been reported. These techniques are beneficial for effortlessly supporting patients' locomotive functions, but the users of such devices must necessarily remain dependent on them. It is possible that some individuals with gait...