Guest Lecture

26.11.2026

A Visuospatial Complexity Framework for Analysing Anticipation in Naturalistic Active Vision

Speaker:
Dr. Vasiliki Kondyli (Department of Psychology, Lund University, Sweden)

Host:
Cognitive Neurobiology, Research Center One Health Ruhr

Venue:
MB 7/159, Ruhr University Bochum

Starting time:
1 pm

Abstract:
Understanding active vision in naturalistic environments requires investigating how the brain generates predictions and anticipates events under dynamic and uncertain conditions, while examining coordinated interactions across distributed brain networks. We propose a cognitive visuospatial complexity model that enables systematic parametrisation of dynamic visual stimuli for functional neuroimaging, behavioural experimentation, and psychophysics. The model supports the controlled construction of graded complexity levels along an abstraction-to-realism axis, capturing key prediction-relevant dimensions, including occlusions, contextual continuity, temporal regularity, event-based anticipation, and constraints from commonsense and naïve physics. An accompanying stimulus dataset demonstrates the model's practical implementation in neuroimaging applications. The framework provides a standardised and reproducible stimulus-design space, enhancing cross-study comparability, multimodal data integration, and the testing of computational models of active vision and predictive processing. Ultimately, it aims to advance the methodological foundations for investigating the neurocognitive and behavioural mechanisms of active vision under ecologically valid naturalistic conditions.