Future Thinking Lecture 2024: Lisa Feldman Barrett

On 28 June 2024, Lisa Feldman Barrett gave the first Vienna Cognitive Science Hub: Future Thinking Lecture in the Sky Lounge to about 120 guests from the University of Vienna and other research institutions.

World-renowned psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett was the featured speaker for the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub’s first Future Thinking Lecture “Constructing the Mind”. In a lecture that Professor Feldman Barrett herself described as abstract and conceptual, she looked at the summarised findings of her many years of research through the lens of the brain as a predictive organ. Starting from the physiological concept of allostasis, the brain’s ability to predict changing conditions (first introduced by Peter Sterling and Joseph Eyer in 1988 as a complementary concept to homostasis), she developed hypotheses about the construction of perceived reality in humans, constructed from internal and external perceptions, on the basis of her empirical research with the aid of physiological conditions and evolutionary theories. She presented a whirlwind overview of her group's empirical research, which she synthesised into an overall picture that challenges the standard model of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The functional areas and their neurological correlates assumed in classical cognitive psychology are only artefacts of a superficial approach, directly challenged by Professor Feldman Barrett’s view that the brain functions holistically.

Her captivating lecture on brain function was received by a highly interested and attentive Viennese audience, comprised of external institutions (such as the Medical University Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, and the CEU) as well as the University of Vienna – we welcomed representative from nine Faculties, two Centres, two Horizontal Structures, the Vienna Schools, and the Max Perutz Labs. From bachelor students to university professors, all levels of scientists were present.

Lisa Feldman Barrett met the audience at eye level and tailored the details of her presentation to the expertise in the room. After her excellent presentation, Professor Feldman Barrett took plenty of time for questions and answers, listening intently, asking questions of her own to make sure she understood, and taking her time with thoughtful answers. Intellectually stimulated, the discussion continued in and on the terrace of UniVie’s Sky Lounge long after the lecture.