Michael Hanke

Research Group Leader of Psychoinformatics, Institute of Psychology at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg

Our research covers a broad range from advancing research methodology, to the actual engineering of readily usable tools (such as PyMVPA and NeuroDebian), to the application of such developments to concrete research questions in medicine, psychology, or cognitive neuroscience. Most recently, our main research focus lies on studying the representation of information about, and for interacting with, the environment. We believe that ecologically valid conclusions about these representations can only be drawn when they are also studied under conditions of real-life complexity. Hence our aim is to combine controlled experiments with complex natural stimulation in order to validate our findings. To this end we are building a unique resource for studying the brain’s natural behavior (studyforrest.org). It combines brain imaging with other data acquisition techniques to capture a versatile recording of the human response to a prolonged complex natural stimulus, the motion picture “Forrest Gump”. To complement this effort, we develop data management software that aids local workflows, but also data discovery, and simplifies access to data across many providers, and to re-share data with a community.

Keywords: MVPA – open-science – data sharing – functional alignment – real-life cognition

Location: OVGU (FNW)

Webpage: Link