Activities
28 March 2024
Project presentation: Multilevel-grounded
semantics - language, music, visual cognition
On Thursday, 28 March 2024, researchers and associates gave the
first presentation of the new project on multilevel-grounded
semantics, as jointly implemented by the Center for Cognitive
Sciences and Branch in Niš of the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts (No. O-36-24, coordinator: academician Aleksandar
Kostić). The principal investigator and head of the Center for
Cognitive Sciences, Prof. Mihailo Antović, gave a retrospective
of the first ten years of work of the Center and thanked the
Branch in Niš of the Serbian Academy for continued support.
After this, the basics of the multilevel-grounding theory were
given followed by current and planned activities on the project.
Finally, young associates were given opportunity to present
their own roles in the project (Nikola Stojanović, Mladen
Popović, Anja Tošić, Miloš Milisavljević, Anja Petrović, and
Olivera Marković).
01 Feb 2024
Center for Cognitive Sciences
starts cooperation with Niš Branch of the Serbian Academy of
Sciences and Arts
On Thursday, 01 February 2024, on the premises of Niš Branch of
the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the first meeting was
organized, with the project head and associates of the project
"Multilevel-grounded semantics: Language, music, visual
cognition" (No. O-36-24, coordinator: academician Aleksandar
Kostić). Project head, and head of the Center for Cognitive
Sciences, Prof. Mihailo Antović, Ph.D., acquainted the team with
the initial project activities. An official presentation of the
project is planned in March 2024.
28 Sep 2023
Prof. Antović's book presentation
On Thursday, 28 September 2023, Prof. Mihailo Antović, head of
the Center for Cognitive Sciences held a lecture intended as a
presentation of his book
Multilevel Grounding: A Theory of
Musical Meaning (Routledge, 2022). The event took the
form of a lecture jointly organized by the Center for Cognitive
Sciences and Niš Branch of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and
Arts, within the project
The Musical Heritage of Southeast
Serbia (O-10-17, coordinator: corresponding academy
member Jelena Jovanović, project manager: Prof. Danijela Zdravić
Mihailović, Ph.D.). Following an excellent opening by Prof.
Dragan Žunić, Ph.D., a fruitful discussion ensued. This event
marks a new step in the hopefully even stronger cooperation of
our two institutions.
08 - 12 May 2023
Prof. Ivo Popivanov's talks
On Tuesday, 9 May 2023,
Prof. Ivo Popivanov of the
Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the
New
Bulgarian University gave a talk entitled
"DIFFERENTIATING
FACES FROM OBJECTS: A PILOT ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY". After
providing an overview of face recognition studies involving
behavioral methods (including eye tracking), Prof. Popivanov
discussed invasive and non-invasive methods for
electrophysiological measurement. He then presented results
obtained by members of the renewed EEG lab at NBU, where
researchers have used a 32-channel EEG system eWave by
Sciencebeam to have participants distinguish between
face-presenting and deliberately scrambled visual stimuli.
Preliminary results and potentials for cooperation were
considered.
On Thursday, 11 May 2023, Prof. Popivanov delivered a lecture
entitled
"TEST YOUR MEMORY - A SELF-ADMINISTERED INSTRUMENT
FOR COGNITIVE SCREENING IN ELDERLY PEOPLE." The talk
introduced a quick, self-screening tool for diagnosing dementia,
known as "Test Your Memory (TYM)". Prof. Popivanov's team has
translated the test from English into Bulgarian and has provided
a preliminary validation of the test. Interesting
question-and-answer sessions followed both talks.
22 March 2023
Prof. Anna Bonifazi's visit and talk
On Wednesday, 22 March 2023,
Prof. Dr. Anna Bonifazi of
the
Department of Linguistics at the University of Cologne
delivered a talk entitled
"TEARS IN MUSIC: TOWARDS A
COGNITIVE-SEMIOTIC ACCOUNT". The
lecture offered results of a pilot investigation on a sample
of 21 Western-music songs thematizing weeping - and ranging in
genre and age. Her initial input consisted of recurrent themes
in ancient Greek mentions of tears associated with
performative events, such as the prominence of sound,
interjections, strong self-referentiality, repetitions, and
refrains. In her analysis of modern and contemporary songs and
arias, she adopted a cognitive-semiotic approach that focused
on the semiotic complexity derived from the integration of
multiple modalities/modes (weeping, lyrics, music (including
musical notation), and images, in different combinations), and
on the cognitive mappings that stemmed from several observable
metonymic, metaphorical and iconic cross-modal relations. The
lecture inspired a vivid and interesting discussion, with both
local and online audiences participating in the debate.
22 December 2022
Dr. Mats Küssner's talk
On Tuesday, November 22th 2022,
Dr. Mats Küssner, research
associate in the Department of Musicology and Media Studies at
Humboldt University in Berlin, gave a remote talk in the
Center for Cognitive Sciences titled
"IN THE MIND'S EYE OF
THE LISTENER: EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF VISUAL MENTAL IMAGERY IN
MUSIC COGNITION". In his talk. Dr. Küssner argued that
visual mental imagery (i.e. seeing images in one's mind's eye)
is a common phenomenon during music listening. He presented
recent empirical evidence on its content, function, relation to
emotion, neurophysiological correlates, and relationship with
synaesthesia, before discussing the findings in light of routes
from perception to imagination. A fruitful exchange of ideas
followed.
October 2022
Head of the Center for Cognitive Sciences
delivers a keynote lecture at the Free University of
Bolzano, Italy
Prof. Mihailo Antović, head of the Center for Cognitive
Sciences, delivered a keynote talk at the conference
"Lost
in Translation: The Challenge of Communicating Music through
Words", organized in the Faculty of Education, Free
University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bressanone Campus, Italy, 6-7
October 2022. Prof. Antović's talk entitled
"Unity in
Diversity: How Musical Verbalization Can Help Address Some
Major Questions of Cognitive Science" introduced his
theory of multilevel grounding in musical meaning construction
and discussed methodological issues in studying (schematic)
signification in musical structure.
June 2022
Center for Cognitive Sciences hosts a Return
Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Upon the completion of his Humboldt Fellowship at Humboldt
University, Berlin, Prof. Antović was awarded a one-year return
fellowship to reintegrate in his home institution and ensure the
sustainability of his project conducted in Germany. To that end,
he has gathered a team of four junior scholars into a research
group pursuing questions of semantics in cognitive science. The
team includes Olivera Marković, Anja Tošić, Miloš Milisavljević
and Anja Petrović, doctoral students in the Faculty of
Philosophy. They are working on joint studies, preparing papers
and conference presentations.