Welcome to SFB 1528 - Cognition of Interaction

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Neural Networking Day

The SFB is again supporting the Göttingen Neural Networking Day, which will take place June 12, 2026 at the German Primate Center. SFB-Postdoc Ayuno Nakahashi is again part of the organizing committee. The theme of this round of the Networking Days will be on “Plasticity and Restoration”; keynote speakers are Kathrin Kusch, Brett Carter, Tim Gollisch, Oliver Schlüter and Siegrid Löwel. Bring your poster (previously presented posters are welcome!) and win a slot to present your most exciting findings in a 10-minute Blitz talk, and of course enjoy a day of discussions and networking! Registration for the Networking Day is possible until June 5; those wishing to present a poster must sign up until May 22nd.

For more information and registration, please visit the Meeting Website

We continue our recruitment campaign

We are still looking for new members and have currently two open positions. At the German Primate Center, Claudia Fichtel has a postdoc position to fill to study social cognition in the wild with our lemurs at our beautiful Kirindy field site. Together with colleagues from the new Campus Research Alliance Brain, Cognition and Behavior and the RTG 2906 Curiosity, we are looking for someone joining our management team as administrative assistant.

All open positions can be found at our recruitment page

New Study Reveals Complex Visual Attention Patterns in Assamese Macaques

A new study by SFB PhD student Sofia Pereira, Julia Ostner, Oliver Schülke, and colleagues explores how wild Assamese macaques allocate their attention to social interactions among group members. The team found that social interactions are far more engaging than non-interactive social scenes. In particular, agonistic interactions—such as fights or threats—received more attention than friendly ones. These biases were even stronger, when the interactions involved individuals that were much higher in rank than the observer, or when they involved the observer’s close social bonds. For this project, Sofia and her colleagues spent ten months at the Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary field site in Thailand, analyzing nearly 1,000 social interactions among wild Assamese macaques. They examined how group members in the vicinity responded to these events. Their findings suggest that macaques integrate social knowledge from their past interactions into their observations of currently ongoing social interactions of others. The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, underscores the complexity of information integration from bottom-up and top-down processes in real time during social interactions in free-ranging primates.

Read the full paper here

New Study Reveals Key Barriers to Communicating Animal Research

A systematic review published in Public Understanding of Science identifies the major challenges researchers and institutions face when communicating about animal experimentation. The study by SFB members Sebastian Löser, Susanne Bögeholz and colleagues analyzed 65 academic documents and found that the most significant barriers include the inherent complexity and ethical controversies of the research, public opposition and mistrust, and a dysfunctional discourse environment dominated by misinformation and polarization. These factors often lead to discouraged or very selective public engagement and debate. The authors argue that addressing these barriers—through greater transparency, proactive communication, and targeted strategies—is essential for fostering informed dialogue between science and society.

Read the full story here

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