Institute of Medical Psychology / Research Group Psychobiology and Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience

Project description:

Behavioral and neurocognitive changes reflect the human capacity to adapt to altered sensory, physical, and environmental demands through neural plasticity and behavioral compensation. However, it remains unclear how adaptive processes emerge over time, how they change across repeated experiences, and under what conditions they become stable, persist, or reverse. This project investigates the temporal dynamics of neural, perceptual, and behavioral adaptation by simulating two complementary contexts of bodily constraint: aging and pain. Using an aging suit, back-pain simulator, and virtual environments, sensory, motor, mobility, and physical constraints associated with these experiences are experimentally simulated. Participants complete single as well as repeated simulation sessions, allowing immediate compensatory responses to be distinguished from adaptation across repeated exposure. Measurements following the removal of the simulated constraints further allow the persistence, reversal, or reorganization of adaptive changes to be examined. Data collection includes multimodal data, integrating subjective experiences (e.g., perceived effort, body awareness, physical strain, and perceived cognitive load), objective behavioral measures (e.g., movement patterns, reaction times, compensatory strategies), and neurophysiological measures of neural processing and adaptation (e.g., EEG, eye-tracking, and physiological measures), to characterize changes in perception, cognition, body awareness, and behavioral compensation. The multimodal design will allow temporal patterns across these levels to be examined jointly and will help distinguish adaptation from more immediate compensatory responses, habituation, or task-related learning.

The project aims to elucidate how neural and behavioral adaptations emerge and evolve across repeated experiences, whether their temporal profiles differ between different bodily constraints, which adaptive strategies are employed, and which neural processes support their development and maintenance. A central question is whether adaptation follows general temporal principles across different contexts or whether its dynamics depend on the specific type of bodily constraint. The findings will contribute to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying human brain-behavior adaptability and the dynamic processes through which individuals adjust to changing bodily conditions.