Human Action Control: From Intentions to Movements

Dr. Bernhard Hommel holds the chair of “General Psychology” at Leiden University since 1999, after having worked as senior researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychological Research (PhD at the University of Bielefeld in 1990; Habilitation at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich). He is a co-founder and board member of the Leiden Institute for Brain & Cognition (LIBC), secretary of the International Association for Attention and Performance, and member of the German National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on cognitive, computational, developmental, neural, and neurochemical mechanisms of human attention and action control, and the role of consciousness therein. Recent work also addresses the role of emotion, creativity, and religion in human cognition. He is chief editor of two journals and has (co-) authored more than 300 articles in international journals and more than 60 chapters in readers and psychological textbooks, (co-)edited three bookson action control and the relationship between perception and action, and (co-)edited several special issues on attention and action control.
Dr. Stephen B.R.E. Brown studied developmental and cognitive psychology at the University of Amsterdam. After obtaining his Master’s degree there, he moved to Leiden University to obtain a Ph.D. under supervision of Professors Sander Nieuwenhuis and Bernhard Hommel. His dissertation focused on the locus coeruleus, a brainstem nucleus that provides the entire brain with the neuromodulator noradrenaline, which is released whenever we experience arousal.  Currently, Dr. Brown works as a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University, and studies heart rate variability as a predictor of psychosocial stress in collaboration with Professor Jos Brosschot. He is also employed as an instructor at the University of Amsterdam, where he coordinates and teaches a course on Cognition for interdisciplinary students.<Dr. Dieter Nattkemper studied psychology at the University of Münster. His professional career started at the University of Osnabrück where he was engaged in investigating mechanisms of eye movement control in reading. In the 1980s he worked (with W. Prinz) at the University of Bielefeld on issues related to understanding how internal, cognitive models of the environment contribute to controlling human behaviour and how these supposed internal models are generated, consolidated, and modified in response to changes in our external world. He achieved his Ph.D. at the University of Bielefeld with studies elucidating the role of eye movements in tasks that require processes of continuous selection (continuous visual search). Thereafter, he joined the research group ‘Cognition and Action’ of the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research (headed by W. Prinz) where his research focused on questions relating to the mechanisms governing performance in serial reaction tasks. At the end of the past century he moved to Humboldt University Berlin where he studied (with M. Ziessler and P. Frensch) the mechanisms underlying human action planning. Dr. Nattkemper has co-authored several articles in international journals, chapters in readers and psychological textbooks, a German textbook on human action planning and control (with B. Hommel), and co-edited a special issue on human action control. Due to steadily increasing problems caused by multiple sclerosis he finished his professional career as an experimental psychologist and retired at the end of 2013.