Victor Schinazi: Catalogue data in Autumn Semester 2016

Name Dr. Victor Schinazi
URLhttps://www.vrschinazi.com/
DepartmentHumanities, Social and Political Sciences
RelationshipLecturer

NumberTitleECTSHoursLecturers
851-0252-02LIntroduction to Cognitive Science Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 70.

Particularly suitable for students of D-ITET
3 credits2VV. Schinazi, L. Konieczny, T. Thrash
AbstractThe lectures provide an overview of the foundations of cognitive science and investigate processes of human cognition, especially perception, learning, memory and reasoning. This includes a comparison of cognitive processes in humans and technical systems, especially with respect to knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and usage in information processing tasks.
ObjectiveCognitive Science views human cognition as information processing and provides an inter-disciplinary integration of approaches from cognitive psychology, informatics (e.g., artificial intelligence), neuroscience and anthropology among others. The lectures provide an overview of basic mechanisms of human information processing and various application domains. A focus will be on matters of knowledge acquisition, representation and usage in humans and machines. Models of human perception, reasoning, memory and learning are presented and students will learn about experimental methods of investigating and understanding human cognitive processes and representation structures.
851-0252-03LCognition in Architecture - Designing Orientation and Navigation for Building Users Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 40.

Particularly suitable for students of D-ARCH
3 credits2SV. Schinazi, B. Emo Nax, C. Hölscher
AbstractHow can behavioral and cognitive science inform architecture? This project-oriented seminar investigates contributions of cognitive science to architectural design with an emphasis on orientation and navigation in complex buildings and urban settings. It includes theories on spatial memory and decision-making as well as hands-on observations of behavior in real and virtual reality.
ObjectiveTaking the perspectives of building users (occupants and visitors) is vital for a human-centered design approach. Students will learn about relevant theory and methods in cognitive science and environmental psychology that can be used to understand human behavior in built environments. The foundations of environmental psychology and human spatial cognition will be introduced. A focus of the seminar will be on how people perceive their surroundings, how they orient in a building, how they memorize the environment and how they find their way from A to B. Students will also learn about a range of methods including real-world observation, virtual reality experiments, eye-tracking and behavior simulation for design. Students will reflect on the roles of designers and other stakeholders with respect to human-centered design and an evidence-based design perspective. The seminar is geared towards a mix of students from architecture / planning, engineering, computer science and behavioral science as well as anybody interested in the relation between design and cognition. Architecture students can obtain course credit in "Vertiefungsfach" or "Wahlfach"
851-0252-05LResearch Colloquium Cognitive Science Restricted registration - show details
Prerequisite: Participants should be involved in research in the cognitive science group.
1 credit2KC. Hölscher, V. Schinazi, T. Thrash
AbstractThe colloquium provides a forum for researchers and graduate students in cognitive science to present/discuss their ongoing projects as well as jointly discuss current publications in cognitive science and related fields. A subset of the sessions will include invited external visitors presenting their research. Participants of this colloquium are expected to be involved in active research group.
ObjectiveGraduate student train and improve their presentation skills based on their own project ideas, all participants stay informed on current trends in the field and have the opportunity for networking with invited scholars.
851-0252-09LSpecial Topics in Cognitive Neuroscience Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 60.
3 credits2VC. Ghisleni, V. Schinazi
AbstractCognitive neuroscience bridges two seemingly distinct but closely related disciplines. On one side, there is cognitive psychology and on the other side biology, or more specifically, neuroscience. In terms of research, this relatively young field aims to explain such diverse mental processes as thinking, perceiving, feeling, and reasoning by exploring their underlying biological or neural mechanis
ObjectiveThis course explores selected topics of cognitive neuroscience. The course begins with a basic introduction to the field covering neural anatomy and brain physiology. Contemporary methods used in neuroscientific research (e.g., fMRI, EEG) will also be introduced and their benefits and limits critically reviewed. Using this knowledge, we will discuss some of the classic works in neuroscience in visual perception, memory and emotion. This will be accompanied by some famous cases of patients demonstrating problems in these domains (e.g., people with agnosia or amnesia). Further topics will include the cognitive and neural processes involved in pain processing, the placebo effect, as well as spatial representation and navigation.
This course targets students at the Bachelor level with no previous experience. The main requirement for this course is an open and critical mind. By the end of the course, the student will be able to identify the major brain structures and to explain the basic functioning of neurons as well as some of the fundamental principles of how our brain works. Students should have an understanding of the methods used to generate the various findings reported in the literature and the media. The course aims to enable and encourage the students to critically evaluate these findings, and what can and cannot be answered with neuroscience techniques. For each of the topics, students should be able to identify the phenomenon, give examples, and discuss one or two of the main theories explaining it.