Understanding Concepts
Robert Jacobs’s work bridges cognitive and computer sciences.
Jacobs is a professor of both and is a member of the University’s Center for Computation and the Brain. He uses experimental and computational methods to study human perception, learning, memory, and decision-making. A large part of what he does is to use data science to study how people understand concepts by using their senses.
While the primary aim of his lab is to expand our fundamental knowledge of brain, the discoveries of his research group creates also have clinical applications. His work on “sensory substitution” phenomena (where the brain expands its processing of one of the senses to compensate for loss of another) could lead to new therapies for the blind or deaf.