Project of the University of Coimbra aimed at boosting cognitive neuroscience kicks off this Friday

^{English version by Diana Taborda}

The ERA Chair “CogBooster inaugural lecture" will take place on the 21st of April at 11:30 am, at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra (FPCEUC). “Cogbooster” has a 2.5M funding from the European Commission to enable FPCEUC as a Centre of Excellence in the area of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The event will host Jorge Almeida, project coordinator at the UC, and Alfonso Caramazza, expert in cognitive neuroscience and the ERA Chair Holder who will supervise the implementation of the project.

Over the next 5 years, "CogBooster" aims to implement an institutional reform in psychological sciences, focusing on basic psychology and cognitive neuroscience, grounded in science dissemination programmes that promote neuroscience literacy among population and schools, bringing scientists and society closer together.

The funding obtained will also be used to attract international talent in the areas of research and teaching in cognitive neuroscience. Jorge Almeida explains that "CogBooster" results from the "urgent need to establish a more contemporary psychological science, focused on the science of the mind and on fundamental research, using neuroscience methodologies and data from basic science to address societal challenges".

“We need a change in contents and scientific areas of Psychology in Portugal. As opposed to what is currently happening, where we have almost exclusively the prevalence of applied psychology and psychological intervention, we need to give more focus to research in basic psychology and cognitive neuroscience”, Jorge Almeida says. The researcher also stresses that “the five best ranked psychology departments in the world, as well as the best European psychology departments, clearly show that this is the path to follow”.

The project will be implemented under the leadership of Alfonso Caramazza, professor at Harvard University, USA, who is “a researcher with several awards for his outstanding scientific contributions, leadership and mentoring in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience. He successfully created and led research centers and departments of excellence in the field of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, both in the United States of America and in Europe”.

As the name suggests, "CogBooster" aims to be a cognitive neuroscience booster to promote this field of Psychology at the University of Coimbra. As for the importance of this area, the project coordinator at the UC explains that " in order to intervene in an area of health or mental processing, we need to have knowledge of Psychology and Basic Neuroscience, of how the normal system works. For instance, if we are to work with people with reading difficulties, it is vital that we study and understand how the normal system is able to read and understand texts".

The Inaugural Lecture of the project, with the title "Cognitive Neuropsychology: A Window into the Functioning of the Mind/Brain", has free entrance and will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvSzxIA9-k.